TREES by Mark Haddon

 Trees

Mark Haddon

They stand in parks and graveyards and gardens.
Some of them are taller than department stores,
yet they do not draw attention to themselves.

You will be fitting a heated towel rail one day
and see, through the louvre window,
a shoal of olive-green fish changing direction
in the air that swims above the little gardens.

Or you will wake at your aunt’s cottage,
your sleep broken by a coal train on the empty hill
as the oaks roar in the wind off the channel.

Your kindness to animals, your skill at the clarinet,
these are accidental things.
We lost this game a long way back.
Look at you. You’re reading poetry.
Outside the spring air is thick
with the seeds of their children.

Many young people will recognize Mark Haddon as the author of the popular novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is part of the reason why I chose him. “Trees” is a poem that deals with issues of self-identity – what makes a person a person, and how does a person fit into the world. Its conversational tone will engage new readers of poetry, but readers who are willing to give it their full attention will extract a lot of meaning from its 17 lines.