June 27, 2026

Redwoods by Dorianne Laux

Redwoods

The first time I entered a forest

I saw the trees, of course, huddled

together in rings, thin veils of mist

between their branches, some dead

but still standing, or fallen thigh bones

on the desiccated floor, but I also saw

the great buttery platters of fungus

climbing like stepping stones

up their shaggy trunks: tzadee, tzadee,

tzadee, each a different size: small

to large or large to small, as if some

rogue architect had been cocky enough

to install them on the stunned trees’

northern sides, leading up to the balcony

of their one ton boughs. I was here

to investigate my place among them,

these giants, 3000 years old, still

here, living in my lifetime. I should

have felt small, a mere human—petty

in my clumsy boots, burrs in my socks,

while these trees held a glossary of stars

in their crowns, their heads up there

in the croissant shaped clouds,

the wisdom of the ages flowing up

through from root to branchlet ––

though rather I felt large

inside my life, the sum of Jung’s

archetypes: the self, the shadow,

the anima, the persona of my

personhood fully recognized

and finally accepted, the nugget

of my being, my shadow

of plush light. I felt like I was

climbing up those fungal disks

toward something endless,

my birth and death, into my here-ness

and now-ness, the scent and silence

overwhelming me, seeping back

into my pores. You had to have

been there to know such joy,

fear intermingled, my limbs

tingling: ancient, mute.

Redwoods by Dorianne Laux retrieved from this website on 6/26/26

Invitation: “The first time I entered a forest… ”

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

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Dorianne Laux is the author of several collections of poetry, including What We Carry (1994), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Smoke (2000); Facts about the Moon (2005), chosen by the poet Ai as winner of the Oregon Book Award and also a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; The Book of Men (2011), which was awarded the Paterson Prize; and Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected (2019). She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been a Pushcart Prize winner.

Dear Poet 2021: Dorianne Laux reads “The Life of Trees”

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June Courageous Citizen

Enjoy Dennis Kucinich’s wisdom below.

“Mr. Speaker, we make war with such certainty, yet we are befuddled how to create peace. This paradox requires reflection if we are to survive. Making and endorsing war requires a secret love of death, and a fearful desire to embrace annihilation. Creating peace requires compassion, putting ourselves in the other person’s place, and all of their suffering and all of their hopes and to act from our heart’s capacity to love, not fear.”

Dennis Kucinich, at this link by Robert Shetterly