Planting a Sequoia -- Dana Gioia

Guest poem submitted by Filip Comley:

(Poem #1826) Planting a Sequoia All afternoon my brothers and I have worked in the orchard, Digging this hole, laying you into it, carefully packing the soil. Rain blackened the horizon, but cold winds kept it over the Pacific, And the sky above us stayed the dull gray Of an old year coming to an end. In Sicily a father plants a tree to celebrate his first son's birth- An olive or a fig tree-a sign that the earth has one more life to bear. I would have done the same, proudly laying new stock into my father's orchard, A green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs, A promise of new fruit in other autumns. But today we kneel in the cold planting you, our native giant, Defying the practical custom of our fathers, Wrapping in your roots a lock of hair, a piece of an infant's birth cord, All that remains above earth of a first-born son, A few stray atoms brought back to the elements. We will give you what we can-our labor and our soil, Water drawn from the earth when the skies fail, Nights scented with the ocean fog, days softened by the circuit of bees. We plant you in the corner of the grove, bathed in western light, A slender shoot against the sunset. And when our family is no more, all of his unborn brothers dead, Every niece and nephew scattered, the house torn down, His mother's beauty ashes in the air, I want you to stand among strangers, all young and ephemeral to you, Silently keeping the secret of your birth. -- Dana Gioia

To me, this is so moving.  You can sense the grief in the rythym of the
lines.  I like the way Gioia uses the customs of a new birth to contrast
with their remembrance of their child.  The use of weather is evocative,
too.  It is cold winds that hold off the blackness.  The other thing which
strikes me is the how the solidity and age of the Sequoia is set against the
very short life of their son.

It suprised me to find that any of Gioia's poems haven't been included
already.  I discovered him when listening to 'Money' on the BBC Radio 4
program "Poetry Please", a great program based entirely on viewers
recommendations.

Fil.