Beech<\/p>\n
Where there are beech trees, the land is always beautiful.<\/em> <\/p>\n Rain had soaked you, Bob, Hungry, not because you were, You couldn\u2019t work up courage to visit How many times I\u2019ve gone that same distance Regret. Unable to discharge debt, \u2663<\/p>\n Half an hour to visit the viewpoint at K\u00f6nigstuhl,<\/em> Nothing could match our Northwest firs, I was standing where Friedrich stood \u2663<\/p>\n Buchenwald<\/em>\u2014beech forest. The one Buchen,<\/em> hollow and breathy, A word can be tied by torment Which break, then, must be rescued Say Buchenwald,<\/em> beech forest, Say Buchenwald.<\/em> Without its sound, <\/p>\n first printed in Fine Madness,<\/em> <\/a>then in Floating Bridge Review<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Alice Derry\u2019s<\/a> newest collection of poems, Tremolo,<\/a><\/em> is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2012. It received a 2011 Washington Artist Trust Award. Strangers To Their Courage,<\/a> <\/em>from Louisiana State University Press, 2001, was a finalist for the Washington Book Award. She has two previous full collections, Stages of Twilight<\/em> <\/a>(chosen by Raymond Carver) and Clearwater <\/a><\/em>(Blue Begonia Press). A chapbook of translations from Rainer Rilke appeared in 2002 from Pleasure Boat Studio, New York City. Derry taught English and German at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, Washington, for twenty-nine years, where she co-directed the Foothills Writers\u2019 Series.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Beech Where there are beech trees, the land is always beautiful. \u2014 a phrase by Richard Jeffries given me by my friend Bob Pyle, a foremost butterfly expert Rain had soaked you, Bob, as you scrambled down a hillside … Continue reading
\n\u2014 a phrase by Richard Jeffries given me by my friend Bob Pyle,
\na foremost butterfly expert<\/p>\n
\nas you scrambled down a hillside
\nin Switzerland, beeches opening their leaves
\nlike an overture to Beethoven.<\/p>\n
\nbut because you were almost out of money\u2014
\nall that lay between you and want.<\/p>\n
\nthe great Nabakov and talk butterflies.
\nWhat would you have to say? <\/em>
\n\u201cI\u2019ll come back,\u201d you promised yourself.
\nBefore you could, he was dead.<\/p>\n
\nin a foreign country, found what I\u2019ve hungered for,
\nbut couldn\u2019t ready myself
\nto brave the stares and break silence
\nwith rasped, clotted speech\u2014
\na near miss of how words
\nin another language should sound.<\/p>\n
\nyour life became
\nwhat you didn\u2019t have a chance to tell him.<\/p>\n
\nand my companions, far ahead, anxious to see
\nwhat the guidebook promised.
\nI dawdled as always,
\nhoping something would speak.<\/p>\n
\nI scoffed\u2014but disdain can open a space.
\nAround me the smooth gray of the giant beech trunks,
\ntheir unreachable canopy, filtering light,
\na kind of silence: holding fast
\nthe chalk cliffs above the Baltic.<\/p>\n
\nwhen he painted sea and jagged rock, framed
\nby these sheltering beeches\u2014a Romantic painting,
\nthe trees guardians, keeping
\nhis three wanderers from the edge.<\/p>\n
\nnear Weimar no different in its hundred-foot trees
\nrising in full, trembling leaf.<\/p>\n
\nwind in the highest branches,
\npoint of no return. But Wald<\/em> brings me back,
\nand I lean into the trees, trunk to trunk.<\/p>\n
\nto so many things opposite of tree and leaf,
\nof bare branch and breaking forth
\nfrom green-gold, red-brown bud\u2014
\nthat to say it
\nis to break a certain kind of faith
\nwith those who heard it as death.<\/p>\n
\nfrom silencing.<\/p>\n
\nbearing its necessary other burden,
\nwhere human blood\u2019s been soaked indelibly,
\ndenied spirits still calling.<\/p>\n
\nwe might forget this forest.
\nTrees don\u2019t need to speak. We do.<\/p>\n