By Adrienne Rich

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.

• Nature
• Social Commentaries

Poet Bio

Adrienne Rich, born in Baltimore, Maryland, was a leading American poet with nineteen volumes of poetry and four books of essays. Rich was at the forefront of the feminist movement and brought her politics into poetry. She gained early fame when W.H. Auden selected A Change of World as winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1951. Since then, she won numerous awards including the National Book Award and the first Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. For many years she lived and taught in California. See More By This Poet

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