To Return To The Trees

“To Return to the Trees” runs on multiple dual narratives; the poem’s core message invites readers to see the world in terms of simultaneity rather than contradiction. In one narrative about aging, the speaker contemplates his own old age, seeming to long for the peace and wisdom he will acquire once he can “decline like this tree” (Line 7), embracing a time when “grey has grown strong in me” (Line 21). The speaker aligns himself with Ben Jonson; trees personify each poet in their age, the oak for Jonson in Line 8 and the sea-almond for the speaker in Line 11. Beyond the aging of particular poets, whether past or present, the speaker also addresses the aging of language, ideas, and the earth itself. Beyond the wisdom of men, even beyond the word “senex” itself (Line 50), all our efforts at connection and emotion fall “under the sand” (Line 54) bit by bit, effaced “by sand grains, by centuries” (Line 56). Meaning and connection balance between impulse and loss, as the speaker struggles with Seneca and his “gnarled, laborious Latin” (Line 45). But his struggle with these “fragments” (Line 46) represents our struggle to connect and to find meaning, even in the “broken bark” (Line 47) of voices from the distant past.