Elegy for a Walnut Tree

Old friend now there is no one alive


who remembers when you were young


it was high summer when I first saw you


in the blaze of day most of my life ago


with the dry grass whispering in your shade


and already you had lived through wars


and echoes of wars around your silence


through days of parting and seasons of absence


with the house emptying as the years went their way


until it was home to bats and swallows


and still when spring climbed toward summer


you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers


of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened


you and the seasons spoke the same language


and all these years I have looked through your limbs

to the river below and the roofs and the night


and you were the way I saw the world.

“Elegy for a Walnut Tree” by W.S. Merwin, from The Moon Before Morning. © Copper Canyon Press, 2014.

* In honor of Valentine’s Day, write a love poem or love letter to a place, or a tree, or an animal that feels like an “old friend.” What do you want to tell them? What have they gifted you with?

Please share your “old friend” with us below.

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