The Copper Beech

Immense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard like a dress,

with limbs low enough for me to enter it
and climb the crooked ladder to where

I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.

One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell
darkening the sidewalk.

Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches,
I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,

watching it happen without it happening to me.

Copyright Credit: Reprinted from What the Living Do, W. W. Norton & Co., 1997. Copyright © by Marie Howe.
Source: What the Living Do (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1997)