Naming the Trees
We are trying to name the trees as we walk—
early spring, no help from leaves,
though their shapes are etched on our minds, branching
like my hand against your chest.
Only the texture of bark: smooth, riveted, peeling,
and their crowns: spreading or drooping;
needles in groups of three
or five, or soft fronds.
We name them because they tower over us, here
where they were logged, burned,
where they marched back anyway
across charred slopes, saplings
cracking rain-pocked earth. Moosewood,
musclewood, white ash.
We are naming the trees
that edge the perimeter of the burnt-out factory where sky
shouts through windows
on one wall left standing—
letters rubbed out from caving sides—
a wood treatment plant hidden behind barbed wire’s
curtain of honeysuckle: what strangles
the forest undoes us too.
We are naming,
we are naming the trees before they walk away
because we are unlearning forgetfulness,
taking our time,
and right now time loves us
because we just made love, late this morning, slowly
waking each other up, ribbons of light
streaming in on our bodies, through branches, through blinds, and then
we got up and went outside to name the trees:
horse chestnuts, magnolia, tight-budded crab apple,
thinking pink.
On the back of your hand, too, blue veins branch
like roots seeking water,
like the river that roils under the bridge we cross
to a place farther along,
where we can fish, not think
toxic silt carried downstream.
Think: tree swallows in silver maples. We press
our hands against bark to print its pattern on our palms.
I say
your name, and you turn
like a stem toward light. I love you.
There is no good reason
why any of this should be. Today
we are naming the trees, calling them back.
Shagbark hickory, tamarack,
black cherry.
Sugar maple, we say, and it is on our tongues:
Tap it now, in March,
the ground a mash of snow and mud, sap rising
from the roots, a clear drop on the finger:
small sweetness we taste because we know it’s there.
Hannah Fries is the author of Forest Bathing Retreat and the poetry collection Little Terrarium. Read more.
Hannah Fries’ poem, Naming the Trees, was previously published in Little Terrarium (Hedgerow Books, 2016) and is reprinted here by permission of the author.