More Than the Sum

This is a little more traditional, in the sense that American contemporary poetry is traditional. It doesn't have classical rhyme or meter, but there's a sense of when the line should stop. You could say it's a nature poem, but it's really about the speaker's memories and sense of identity as a product of his past and biography. It's supposed to be "real" and somewhat cynical, but it really ends up being pretty full of sentiment despite its protestations.


Normally, I don't know I would recommend it. The end, especially, is a little precious and self-consciously deep. But it somehow manages to become more than the sum of its parts.

Not Yet

Michael Schmidt

My father said he'd have to cut the tree down, 
It was so high and broad at the top, and it leaned 
In towards the house so that in wind it brushed 
The roof slates, gables and the chimney stone 
Leaving its marks there as if it intended to.


We said, don't cut it yet, because the tree was so full 
Of big and little nests, of stippled fruit. 
In spring and summer it spoke in a thousand voices, 
The chicks upturned for love, the birds like fishes 
Swimming among the boughs, and always talking.


And then a day came when the chicks woke up. 
Love was all over, they tumbled from their nests 
Into the air, ricocheted from a leaf, a branch, 
Almost hit the ground, then found their wings 
And soared up crying, brothers, sisters, crying.


Then the nests were vacant. Now we must cut the tree, 
My father said. Again we begged, not yet, 
Because with autumn the freckled fruit began 
To turn to red, to gold, like glowing lamps 
Fuelled with sweetness filtered from the soil


And scent that was musk and orange, peach and rose. 
And when they dropped (they grew on the topmost branches, 
Could not be picked, we took when it was offered) 
We wiped them clean and sliced out the darkening bruise 
Where they'd bounced on the yellow lawn, by then quite hard


With winter coming. The fruit were so much more than sweet, 
Eve fell for such fruit and took Adam with her: 
No serpent whispered, no god patrolled the garden. 
Only my father. Again, not yet, we said, remembering 
What winter had to do with our huge bent tree,


Once it had got the leaves off. We knew the hoar-frost 
Tracery and the three-foot icicles 
And how it simply was, the December moon 
Lighted upon it and hung in its arms like a child. 
Not yet, we said, not yet. And my father died,


And the tree swept the slates clean with its wings. 
The birds were back and nesting, it was spring, 
And nothing had altered much, not yet, not yet.