Spruce Trees in Rain
Today, the dark curtains
of the spruce trees made visible
rain in beaded streaks.
Those beings teach me
the meaning of resilience,
how to stay green, receiving
like communion what light
there is, regardless of season;
to sway in high winds, hanging
loose and limber, bending
as needed to stay upright;
to grow great in unseen regions,
and draw nourishment
in darkness, from darkness;
to shelter the living and the dead;
to live as witness, as sentinel.
Today in rain, the spruce trees
drip from ten thousand needles—
all that motion, all that liquid,
and walking beneath them, I remain
dry, robed in green silence.
Edward A. Dougherty
Edward A. Dougherty's newest book HOUSE, WORLD, HEAVEN is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. He is the author of 11 previous collections as well as a book of essays JOURNEY WORK: CRAFTING A LIFE OF POETRY & SPIRIT. He's lived and worked in the southern Finger Lakes region of upstate New York for nearly 30 years and is working on a research and creative project called Crossing Over, which you can learn about on his website: https://edwarddougherty.wordpress.com.
Why this knocked Taylor out:
The resonance of this poem just really hit me the right way. I think every poem has its own frequency and normally I prefer stuff that really vibrates a high level, but every once in a while I get a soft poem like this that just works. I think at the heart of this poem is wonder, which I’ve been obsessed with lately. Wonder at the world. Wonder at the way light dances through the trees. It’s beautiful. We need more poems that embrace the small windows of light in this world, which is exactly why I published this poem.
The tight focus on the rain and trees keeps this poem tight and sets at atmospheric pace. Readers are easily transported to the scene and can cozy into the wooded witness of the spruce.
I was also so pleasantly surprised by the last five lines. The contrast between hearing the thousand drops and remaining dry from the tree's protection is a powerful moment and a crucially relevant message. The speaker is protected by the thing humanity is killing, and the only thing the speaker can do is witness.
Interview:
Why did you choose Team Taylor for this poem?
Short answer: Martheaus says to send all nature crap to Taylor, and this poem has all kinds of nature crap in it. Longer answer: While God / spirituality isn't directly invoked, the poem entertains the mystery by honoring how the human and natural are not separate, not different. Qualities we think of as "personality" or "character" are being enacted by other living beings as well. I feel there's a kind of genuflection in the poem, and…
Would you consider this "nature poetry" or "ecopoetry" or both and why? Is there a difference to you?
I grew up in an era when you could walk into a record store and find your style--R&B, Rap, rock, country--and I watched out these got more and more refined so that rock became progressive rock, grunge, classic, etc and then further sub-genres emerged (check out the heavy metal types). Now, algorithms give us more of what we've already indicated we like. For the most part, these labels come after-the-fact, post-creation, and so are more helpful for the industry and consumer than for the artist. But the life of the imagination prefers variety, newness, and surprise, so I tend to leave the labelling to others. I do write a lot about nature, though, so "nature poetry" doesn't bother me.
Why is it important to you as a writer to capture moments like this in poetry?
Importance in art always flows in two directions: through the maker and through the receiver. For me, as a poet and as a person, writing poems like this honors momentary, fleeting experiences that resonate or shimmer with significance. Sometimes that significance is a deeper feeling, or an insight, or a realization of connection or kinship. That is the lyric moment, but they are just a moment, so writing is a way of slowing down, honoring those easy-to-miss experiences. Whether that results in a "good poem" or not (again, that is an evaluation or label that is really up to others to determine), the discipline or the practice has enormous value and importance for me. It helps me cherish and savor my own life. For readers, I hope that the intertwining of language, image, and feeling evokes the kind of remarkable connection where someone else speaks for my own experience; the poem names or describes an experience I've had but never articulated before. Such communion with a stranger warms the cold world and draws us into relationship. Ideally, such a lyric poem then returns readers to their own lived experience, perhaps a little heightened and alert to the resonance there.