The Trees

The Trees


by Phillip Larkin


The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.


Is it that they are born again
And we grow old?  No, they de too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.


Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Mary Lee Smith-Brown with her granddaughter Angela in Cherokee County, Ga.  She loved the Smoky Mountains.  She had Cherokee Indian ancestors, Augusta Cole and Mourning Brown who lived in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.