Strange World
In the life before this one,
these evergreens
draped
with a thickly-needled hush,
these bearers of fragrant shadows
smelling faintly of another world
as babies do after their bath–
in the life before this one,
these trees were hermits
who prayed steadily
through the long nights of self-hatred
and the even longer days
filled with wearisome unending fear.
Because of their stubborn devotion
to the invisible god
in which they believed
despite all lack of evidence,
they were allowed to come back
rooted in the deep earth of humility,
this time unafraid of the darkness
or the light.
Now they no longer need
to pray with words:
their whole bodies rise up
in thick-barked praise,
in needles shaking with delight,
even as they sink down
into secret black rivers
of roots
which circle the earth
in a slow measured flowing
unbothered
by the great triumphs
that occur on earth,
or the even greater failures.
We are not such marvelous hermits
and never will be.
These trees are from god.
And if it turns out there is no god,
still they have found a way
to come from him.
Strange and pitiable world–
it is still possible
for us to walk by an evergreen
and not bow our heads in prayer
as we would bow our heads
before any god
suddenly put in our path,
any god
singing of heaven and earth,
of darkness and light,
of the world to come
and the world that has always been.
JIM MOORE lives in Minneapolis with his wife, the photographer JoAnn Verburg. Read More
Jim Moore’s poem “Strange World” was previously published in Underground: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2014) and is reprinted here by permission of the author.