Poem of the Week: The Cherry Tree

Just as every winter I’m surprised at the chill, each spring somehow manages to catch me off-guard, even though it comes right around the same time every year.  This week has been cold and rather gray, but I find myself gaping at the sudden bursts of color on trees so recently barren.  It’s a pleasant form of amnesia, this annual surprise at the changing of season for the better.

The Cherry Tree

by David Wagoner

Out of the nursery and into the garden
where it rooted and survived its first hard winter,
then a few years of freedom while it blossomed,
put out its first tentative branches, withstood
the insects and the poisons for insects,
developed strange ideas about its height
and suffered the pruning of its quirks and clutters,
its self-indulgent thrusts
and the infighting of stems at cross purposes
year after year.  Each April it forgot
why it couldn’t do what it had to do,
and always after blossoms, fruit, and leaf-fall,
was shown once more what simply couldn’t happen.

Its oldest branches now, the survivors carved
by knife blades, rain, and wind, are sending shoots
straight up, blood red, into the light again.

Related posts:

1. Poem of the Week: February Evening in New York
2. Poem of the Week: Winter Poem
3. Poem of the Week: Song