Treelines

Frost lamented the leafless peach °

lost on a fierce December night,

victim of willful overreach—

a tree too prone to freeze and blight

planted in coarse New England till °

north of the poet's windowsill.

What would he say of seedling spruce

spaded into our prairie clay,

never to shelter grouse or moose

from daylong night or nightlong day?

A bout of Dust Bowl heat and drought

burns our boreal transplants out

just as the gale from Hudson Bay

froze Frost's over-ambitious peach.

Why does the mind refuse to stay

confined by lines it cannot breach?

It yearns for spruce and peach to grow

side by side in the summer snow.

Alan Sullivan

Notes for students:

Frost = Robert Frost (reference is being

   made to Frost's poem "There Are Roughly

   Zones")

till = glacial soil composed of sand, clay

   and gravel

© Alan Sullivan.

First printed in The Lyric.

Reprinted by permission of the author.