JOHN ASHBERY
Some Trees
These are amazing: each Joining a neighbour, as though speech Were a still performance. Arranging by chance
To meet as far this morning from the world as agreeing With it, you and I Are suddenly what the trees try
To tell us we are: That their merely being there Means something; that soon We may touch, love, explain.
And glad not to have invented Such comeliness, we are surrounded: A silence already filled with noises, A canvas on which emerges
A chorus of smiles, a winter morning. Placed in a puzzling light, and moving, Our days put on such reticence These accents seem their own defence.