The Apple Tree by Wendell Berry- Andy Hoyt

The Apple Tree

Wendell Berry

In the essential prose

of things, the apple tree

stands up, emphatic

among the accidents

of the afternoon, solvent,

not to be denied.

The grass has been cut

down, carefully

to leave the orange

poppies still in bloom;

the tree stands up

in the odor of the grass

drying. The forked

trunk and branches are

also a kind of necessary

prose—shingled with leaves,

pigment and song

imposed on the blunt

lineaments of fact, a foliage

of small birds among them.

The tree lifts itself up

in the garden, the

clutter of its green

leaves halving the light,

stating the unalterable

congruity and form

of its casual growth;

the crimson finches appear

and disappear, singing

among the design.

Wendell Berry is well known for his commentaries on the value and beauty of nature in most all forms. This poem describes a simple apple tree that radiates pride and elegance despite being surrounded by a precisely manicured fabrication.Through colorful imagery, Berry shows how the simple features of a tree, "the forked trunk and branches... the clutter of its leaves," speak more to the beauty of the natural world than any human creation. I chose this poem because Berry is able to gracefully describe what so many of us are unable to articulate; the elegance that can be found in the most common of things. This is a universal truth that most of us experience at some point our lives. There is a certain indescribable beauty found in everything nature has to offer us, from a tiny pebble to a vast ocean.


Source:

Berry, Wendell. "The Apple Tree." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Magazine, n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2014. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/100/6#!/20588924>.