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The Copper Beech by Marie Howe: American Life in Poetry #66

Some of the most telling poetry being written in our country today has to do with the smallest and briefest of pleasures. Here Marie Howe of New York captures a magical moment: sitting in the shelter of a leafy tree with the rain falling all around.
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.


American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from "What the Living Do," W. W. Norton & Co., 1997. Copyright © by Marie Howe. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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  • Playstation2004
    September 23
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    I like the practicing being alone part as well. I think we al fall prey to this mindset from time to time and it's as if nothing but being alone can cure us.

  • ea silver member
    September 23
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    I can't get past how a beech tree can wear a yard. I can see how it would look like it was wearing a dress (of leaves) but not a yard.

  • zorman32
    September 22
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    I like it very much

    I love the way the word "where" in the second stanza almost screams for a punctuation mark, hinting at more than [to where] "I could lean..."

    That stanza could stand on it's own, or flow from the "where" either way just as easily to me.

    "practice being alone." that's another part, hints and winks all through the piece and yet, it's about climbing a tree and not being caught in the rain.

    Technically, it's not much different than a lot of poems I don't like, but something is different in the touch and feel of it that makes this poem work for me. I like it very much.