The Names of Trees
Walking down a familiar street
I wonder at the names of trees—
sycamore, maple, chestnut—
pass a silver-haired woman
in a purple bathrobe,
bent over in her driveway
to pick up the morning paper.
In my hand I hold a chestnut,
worn smooth like the one
among my father’s keepsakes
I found after his death.
I don’t know why my father kept
a single chestnut but searching
for some object to show my students
there are no ideas but things
and I were to write a poem
for my father, I would write
of the hard brown chestnut
in my hand, but I don’t really know
if the tree shading the old woman
is a sycamore or maple or if my father
ever knew his father or if he dies
before he could give him anything
but the name we share and this chestnut
in my hand because I write this
thirty years after his death forgetting
what he left me or if he left me anything
but love and what is that but an idea,
nothing really but an idea
and his smooth hardness
in my heart that I know
but cannot name.
The Names of Trees | from In Another Life - Selected Poems by Jeff Arnett
in Poetry