Trees — Jun 10, 2026

Kilmer's little poem does something almost sneaky: it spends twelve lines building an elaborate compliment to trees, only to end by admitting that comparison was rigged from the start — nothing made by human hands, not even a poem, can match what grows on its own from the ground. The rhymed couplets keep it plain and singable, almost like a hymn, which suits the poem's real subject: quiet devotion. The images do the heavy lifting. A tree with a "hungry mouth" pressed to the earth turns something rooted and still into something intimate, almost tender. And the tree lifting "leafy arms to pray" gives an ordinary maple or oak the posture of worship. It still lands because it asks so little of the reader — just a moment of looking up, and noticing that the natural world was doing something graceful long before anyone wrote a line about it.