Poetry in Winter: A Tale of Heart, Friendship, and the “Shoulds” We Carry

The Elephant Child by D. Wallace Peach

There’s something magical about poetry in wintertime. Perhaps it’s the way words seem to echo in the stillness, or how stories find warmth in the cold. A couple of years ago, Diana Wallace Peach shared her delightful poem The Elephant Child with me and graciously allowed me to create a video pairing her recitation with my winter photography.

This charming tale of an elephant lost in the snow and the brave little mice who come to his rescue reminds us that kindness and courage often come in the smallest packages. It’s a poem that makes me smile every time I hear it, a gentle reminder that compassion is a kind of light in the darker months.

As the first snowflakes fall and the year draws to a close, stories like this one feel especially dear. So, pour a cup of tea, wrap yourself in a warm blanket, and join us for this winter’s tale of friendship and homecoming.

As we enter the Holiday Season, a time that celebrates joy, love, peace, and hope, The Elephant Child reminds us to prepare our hearts and minds to cherish these precious final weeks of 2025. It’s in these small, gentle stories that we rediscover what matters most: kindness, connection, and the quiet courage to care.

With gratitude to D. Wallace Peach for sharing her words and spirit.

Until the next page turns, may your days be filled with warmth, wonder, and a good story to share.

Rebecca

https://youtu.be/iElhOjFzfEc?si=urMqA_W-9IpzgY02

The Elephant Child by D. Wallace Peach

An elephant child, carefree and wild
Walked into the wintry woods
He followed fox tails and jackrabbit trails
Ignoring his mother’s “shoulds”

Of course, he got lost and chilled by the frost
As night began to fall
To his rump he sunk and tooted his trunk
But no one answered his call

Oh, that cold night, to the elephant fright
The clouds began to snow
He sniffled and shivered, shook and quivered
His nose he needed to blow

The blizzard swirled and snowflakes twirled
He plodded on wobbly knees
His head grew stuffy, the snow so fluffy
He blew out a honking sneeze

Losing hope, he started to mope
When in an evergreen tree
He spied a house, just right for a mouse
And he let go a trumpet of glee

Alas the place hadn’t the space
To fit an elephant’s bulk
The lost little guy plunked down for a cry
His head hung low in a sulk

The house was quite nice, chock full of mice
Who whispered quiet and low
What was that? Did you hear a cat?
Lurking out in the snow?

Across the wood floor, they dashed to the door
Flicked on the outside light
In a rodent flurry, they squeaked and scurried
An elephant! What a sight!

Let’s offer a seat for a tea and a treat
Said a mouse who felt overly bold
I think he is lost so covered in frost
And surely his ears are cold.

Full of care and courage to spare
They crawled out on a limb
They slipped on the ice those brave little mice
And their mission turned quite grim

But they held on tight with all their might
And called to the elephant
Come in from the storm, come in and get warm
But the elephant said I can’t!

Though I’m only four, I’ll bust the door
I’ll break the branch from the tree
I’ll crack your stairs and squash your chairs
I’m far too heavy, you see.

You have to try, hurry in and dry
Get up! Please give it a go!
The elephant groaned, he mumbled and moaned
Though he longed to get out of the snow.

With strength galore, he pushed on the door
The tree branch started to bend
The home nearly fell, and the mice had to yell
Please stop, or we’re end-over-end!

The elephant frowned as the flakes tumbled down
His trunk a bright shade of blue
Oh, what a glitch, mice-whiskers did twitch.
What were the rodents to do?

Now, due to their size, mice aren’t very wise
Their brains are as tiny as seeds
They may not be smart, but they have lots of heart
And sometimes that’s all that you need.

They sketched out a plan as only mice can
And piled his back with sweaters
And blankets and sheets, and curtains with pleats
Tiny coats of wool and black leather

With the elephant warm, and safe from all harm
They dialed their old-fashioned phone
We’re seeking his mother, a father or brother!
This elephant’s all alone!

Well what do you know, because of the snow
His parents were suffering fits
They dashed to him fast and hugged him at last
And stayed for some tea and biscuits.

Thus ends the plight of the elephant’s night
Be careful when out in the woods
You might meet some mice who are caring and nice
But just in case…
Remember your mother’s shoulds

Poem by D. Wallace Peach
Recitation by D. Wallace Peach

https://anchor.fm/s/4e4af350/podcast/rss

#collaboration #dwallacepeach #epidemicsound #howardharperbarnes #poetry #poetrySalon #rebecca #theelephantchild #winterpoem

The Way Through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling

This was my first reading of Rudyard Kipling’s The Way Through the Woods, and it felt less like discovering a text than stepping into a presence—something waiting, insistent, profound.

It tells of a road, closed seventy years ago, now hidden beneath trees, anemones, and the quiet lives of doves and badgers. The forest has reclaimed what human hands once cut open, and time itself has buried the memory.

The Way Through the Woods

by Rudyard Kipling

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.

On the surface, it is a poem of erasure. There was once a road; now there is no road. Yet Kipling shifts the ground beneath us. If you enter the woods on a summer evening, he writes, you may hear hoofbeats and the swish of skirts—the sound of travelers who still ride the old path. It is as though memory itself lingers in the air, haunting the present with its unseen presence.

Kipling knew loss. By the time this poem appeared in Rewards and Fairies (1910), he had already faced grief, and more would come—the devastating loss of his son in the First World War. The road in the poem feels like an image of memory itself: once clear, now overgrown, yet still alive with whispers. The ghostly riders are not frightening; they are tender reminders that what we lose does not vanish entirely. It moves differently through time.

What makes the poem all the more powerful is its recognition of nature’s steady triumph. The woods outlast the road. Rain and weather undo human plans. In the end, it is the trees and the night air that remain. Nature both conceals and heals, folding human absence into her vast endurance.

The Way Through the Woods invites us to hold two truths together: that we are haunted by what is gone, and that life continues in its own rhythms beyond us. In that sense, it is not just a ghost poem or a meditation on memory—it is also an ecological vision. Kipling reminds us that human marks are temporary, while the earth carries on, resilient and self-renewing.

To walk into the woods at dusk is to enter that mystery: to know that loss is real, yet so is continuity. There is no road through the woods, and yet—if we listen—we might still hear the sound of passing riders, steady and sure.

May we walk gently, listening for the whispers of the woods.

Rebecca

Postscript: Rudyard Kipling’s name often brings to mind empire, adventure, and the rhythms of marching verse. Yet The Way Through the Woods, first published in 1910 in Rewards and Fairies, reveals another voice: quieter, haunted, more attuned to absence than conquest.

Rewards and Fairies was itself a curious and beautiful creation—a mixture of short stories and poems, intended as a sequel to Puck of Pook’s Hill. In both books, Kipling draws on the figure of Puck, the mischievous sprite of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to conjure ghosts of England’s past for two children, Dan and Una. Each story is followed by a poem, almost like an echo that lingers after the tale.

The Way Through the Woods was paired with the story “Marklake Witches.” That tale, set in Sussex during the Napoleonic Wars, tells of a French émigré doctor and the suspicion surrounding Ollyett, a young woman branded a witch for her healing knowledge. It explores superstition, memory, and the endurance of old beliefs. The poem serves as a companion piece, shifting the focus from haunted human stories to the haunted landscape itself. Just as superstition lingers in the story, so too do ghostly hoofbeats linger in the woods where a road once lay.

Seen in this light, the pairing is deliberate: Kipling was exploring how the past never fully disappears. Whether through human memory and myth, or through the land itself, we live among echoes of what came before.

Here, Kipling becomes less the bard of empire and more the poet of impermanence. He gives us a vision where nature is stronger than human memory, and where the past lingers as sound and shadow rather than as solid ground. For readers today, this may be his most enduring legacy: not the imperial storyteller, but the writer who understood how loss and healing, time and memory, all move through the woods together.

#poetry #poetryInTheAfternoon #poetryInTheEvening #poetryInTheMorning #poetrySalon #rudyardKipling #theWayThroughTheWoods

October by Robert Frost

October: A Celebration of Quiet Resilience

When I first recited “October” in 2020, the world was standing still. Streets were empty, gatherings were postponed, and even the air seemed to hesitate. Yet in that pause, poetry found its voice again. Frost’s gentle invocation to ‘retard the sun with gentle mist’ became a kind of prayer. Not for escape, but for endurance.

Resilience does not always roar. Sometimes, it whispers ‘slow, slow.’ It asks us to hold on just a little longer, to find beauty even in uncertainty. In Frost’s world, the falling of each leaf is not a loss but part of the rhythm of survival. Each pause, each delay, each quiet act of attention becomes an affirmation that life continues in tender, imperfect, and enduring ways.

https://youtu.be/fXtzCRWjXu0?si=3bpLzZakJ6cft2Pt

Looking back now, “October” reminds me how we learned to adapt: to find comfort in small rituals, to connect through words when touch was forbidden, and to let art and poetry become our gathering places. The mist that Frost imagined became, for us, a shelter with a soft veil through which we could still see light.

October

By Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

So today, as leaves again turn to gold and wind stirs through the trees, I read “October” not as a farewell, but as a renewal. It is a reminder that even in seasons of loss, resilience grows quietly, leaf by leaf, word by word, morning by morning.

October by Robert Frost – Rebecca's Reading Room

Until the next page turns,

Rebecca

#Autumn #PoetryInTheAfternoon #PoetryInTheEvening #PoetryRecitation #PoetrySalon #RebeccaSReadingRoom #RobertFrost

Herman Melville, Poet of Contradictions

Until recently, I only knew Herman Melville as the author of Moby Dick and other seafaring novels. Imagine my surprise when I came across his poem Art and discovered another side of Melville – the poet. I had not realized that in his later years, when his novels were largely dismissed, he poured his creative energies into verse.

Art

Herman Melville (1819–1891)

In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt—a wind to freeze;
Sad patience—joyous energies;
Humility—yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity—reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel—Art.

In Art, Melville captures in a handful of lines the tension every artist knows: the collision of flame and frost, patience and urgency, humility and pride. Creation, he tells us, is no gentle unfolding but a wrestling match with the angel. Jacob’s midnight struggle becomes the artist’s daily one: a demand for strength, vulnerability, and devotion all at once.

Discovering Melville’s poetry is like finding a quiet chamber off a grand hall. It is smaller, more intimate, but no less profound. Here we meet not only the sailor of prose but the pilgrim of paradox, who insists that art is born where contradictions refuse to cancel one another out, and instead fuse into something entirely new.

Reading the poem, Art, I felt a kinship with Melville’s honesty about how hard creativity can be. He doesn’t romanticize it—he calls it wrestling. And yet, in naming the struggle, he offers a kind of encouragement: art is forged not in perfection but in paradox.

Until the next page, may we meet courageously the contradictions that shape art and life.

Rebecca

Postscript: By the time Melville turned to poetry in the 1860s, his novels had been largely dismissed or ignored. Moby-Dick, now hailed as a masterpiece, was a commercial failure in his lifetime. The disappointment must have been excruciating for a writer who had poured so much of his spirit into prose. He spent much of his later career working as a customs inspector in New York, feeling misunderstood and financially strained.

It was in this context that Melville turned to poetry, publishing volumes such as Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) and Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876). His verse wrestles with disillusionment, mortality, and the silence of God, which was a reflection on both his personal struggles and the upheavals of his time, including the American Civil War.

His poetry was not the happiest of work, but it was deeply honest. To read it is to encounter a man who continued to wrestle with the largest questions of existence long after the world seemed to turn away. That ongoing struggle, far from diminishing his voice, may be what gives his poetry its lasting resonance.

#art #HermanMelville #Poetry #PoetryInTheAfternoon #PoetryInTheEvening #PoetrySalon

Leaves by Sara Teasdale

Letting Go – A Reflection on Sara Teasdale’s Poem, “Leaves”

“One by one, like leaves from a tree.
All my faiths have forsaken me;”

So begins Sara Teasdale’s quietly powerful poem Leaves. With just two lines, she opens a meditation on release — not as an act of despair, but as an act of grace.

Teasdale often wrote at the edges of feeling, where the heart meets the natural world. In Leaves, she surrenders to change — not passively, but with the wisdom of someone who has lived through many seasons. Each falling leaf becomes a metaphor for what we are asked to release in life: expectations, grief, youth, even love. And yet, there is no bitterness in her words. Only stillness. Only wind.

This poem reminds me that letting go doesn’t always need to be loud. There is a quiet strength in yielding, a power in choosing not to hold too tightly. In my own life, I have found this kind of gentle release in moments of transition — the closing of a chapter, the farewell to a place or person, the shift from one season of being to the next. Teasdale captures that threshold with exquisite simplicity.

https://youtu.be/XwJqMcbcI0o?si=a2iUC9kLjl0nCOW6

Leaves

by Sara Teasdale

One by one, like leaves from a tree,
All my faiths have forsaken me;
But the stars above my head
Burn in white and delicate red,
And beneath my feet the earth
Brings the sturdy grass to birth.
I who was content to be
But a silken-singing tree,
But a rustle of delight
In the wistful heart of night
I have lost the leaves that knew
Touch of rain and weight of dew.
Blinded by a leafy crown
I looked neither up nor down
But the little leaves that die
Have left me room to see the sky;
Now for the first time I know
Stars above and earth below

How Sara Teasdale Speaks to Our World Today

Though Sara Teasdale wrote in the early 20th century, her poetry carries an intimacy that feels strikingly relevant to our 21st-century lives. In an age of rapid change, digital noise, and constant performance, her voice is a balm — spare, honest, and deeply human.

Leaves, in particular, mirrors the quiet struggles of letting go — of identities, relationships, dreams, or expectations. While the world often celebrates noise, speed, and achievement, Teasdale reminds us of the sacredness of stillness, the dignity of sorrow, and the strength it takes to soften.

Her work did not shy away from isolation, longing, or existential reflection. Those same emotions feel even more present today, in the midst of uncertainty, climate anxiety, and personal reinvention. In her words, we find a mirror for our contradictions: desire and solitude, hope and melancholy, beauty and transience.

Perhaps that is why she still feels so alive to us now. Teasdale gives us permission to linger — to feel deeply, to let things go at our own pace. In her gentleness, there is a kind of rebellion. And in her vulnerability, a timeless strength.

https://anchor.fm/s/4e4af350/podcast/rss

My Takeaway

For me, this poem is an invitation to trust the seasons of our lives. We cannot stop the leaves from falling, but we can choose how we let them go. To release what no longer serves us is not weakness — it is wisdom.

And how fitting to reflect on this now, in October — the month when the air sharpens, the light softens, and the trees begin their quiet surrender. October has always been my favourite month, a time when endings and beginnings weave together. In Teasdale’s words, I hear not only farewell, but also the promise of renewal.

So today, I invite you to pause with her poem. Let it stir your own memories, your own moments of soft surrender. Perhaps you, too, are releasing something right now. If so, may the wind be kind.

Thank you for joining me in Rebecca’s Reading Room.

Rebecca

#Autumn #Leaves #PoetryInTheAfternoon #PoetrySalon #SaraTeasdale

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter By Li Bai (Li Po), translated by Ezra Pound (1915)

Some poems arrive like a sudden tide — they rise in your heart before you even understand why. The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, written by Li Bai in the 8th century and translated by Ezra Pound in 1915, came to me that way.

When I read it for the first time, something inside me stilled. I felt an ache that was both personal and universal — the kind of longing that crosses centuries and continents, binding us to someone who lived long ago and yet seems to be speaking directly to us. By the time I reached the final lines, I wanted to cry.

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

By Li Bai (Li Po), translated by Ezra Pound (1915)

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chōkan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-tō-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Chō-fū-Sa.

In just a few stanzas, we witness an entire life unfold. The young wife begins in childhood, pulling flowers by the gate while her future husband plays nearby. She remembers the shy awkwardness of marriage, eyes lowered, uncertain. Then love deepens until it becomes a vow of permanence — “I desired my dust to be mingled with yours… forever.” And then comes absence: the months apart, the quiet changes in her surroundings, the way even yellow butterflies wound her because they remind her of what she is missing.

Ezra Pound’s translation preserves not only Li Bai’s imagery but also the emotional heartbeat of the original. His free verse is plain, unadorned, yet every detail feels weighted with meaning: the moss grown too deep to clear away, the sound of monkeys overhead, the paired butterflies drifting through August air.

What moves me most is the steadfastness of the wife’s love. She doesn’t simply miss her husband — she carries him with her, shaping her days and her memories around his absence. In the end, she reaches outward: “If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang, please let me know beforehand, and I will come out to meet you as far as Chō-fū-Sa.” It is not only a plea; it is an offering, a willingness to bridge the distance between them.

This is why the poem still feels alive today. It is not about an 8th-century river merchant and his wife alone. It is about how love endures across absence, how memory keeps someone present even when they are far away, and how longing itself becomes a form of devotion.

My Takeaway

Reading this poem reminded me that connection is not always about proximity. Sometimes the truest form of love is the willingness to hold another person in your heart, trusting that the bond will endure until you meet again. And in that waiting, there is beauty as well as ache.

Until the next page turns,

Rebecca

Genre Note

This poem belongs to the tradition of “classical Chinese lyric poetry”, written by Li Bai (701–762), one of the great voices of the Tang Dynasty. It is also an ”epistolary poem”, written in the form of a letter from a wife to her absent husband. When Ezra Pound translated it in 1915, he shaped it into “modernist free verse”, blending the intimacy of Li Bai’s original with the clarity and immediacy of early modernist style. Thus, the poem lives at the crossroads of traditions: classical, lyrical, epistolary, and modernist.

#EzraPound #LiBai #LiPo #ModernestPoetry #Poetry #PoetryInTheAfternoon #PoetryInTheEvening #PoetrySalon #TheRiverMerchantSWifeALetter

Meeting up with Elizabeth Madox Roberts

This morning, I invite you to linger with a poet who might be unfamiliar: Elizabeth Madox Roberts, born in 1881 in rural Kentucky. Though she became widely known for her modernist novels, she also wrote poetry that carried the cadence of the fields, the garden rows, and the voices of children at play. She lived at a time when the closeness of people to the land was simply a fact of life, when childhood unfolded outdoors, and when attention to the natural world was as ordinary as breathing.

The Rabbit

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

When they said the time to hide was mine,
I hid back under a thick grape vine.
And while I was still for the time to pass,
A little gray thing came out of the grass.

He hopped his way through the melon bed
And sat down close by a cabbage head.
He sat down close where I could see,
And his big still eyes looked hard at me,

His big eyes bursting out of the rim,
And I looked back very hard at him.

In “The Rabbit”, Roberts gives us more than a charming rhyme. She records a moment of profound stillness: a child hiding in play, a rabbit appearing from the grass, and a gaze shared between them. Nothing more happens, and yet in that gaze lies a recognition—one creature seeing another, fully present in the moment.

When I read this poem today, I feel Roberts inviting us to slow down and recover the art of attention. We live in a world where distractions multiply and our time is pulled in every direction, yet here is a reminder that to pause and look—really look—is to discover wonder again. The child’s gaze at the rabbit teaches us that attentiveness is a form of love, that nature still waits to meet us if we step outside and give it a chance, and that children, even now, carry within them the same deep curiosity that Roberts witnessed in her own time. Perhaps the real lesson for us is that these small encounters matter. They shape how we see the world, and they remind us that even the simplest rhymes can carry wisdom across generations.

I believe Roberts is teaching us that attention itself is an act of love. To look closely, to notice without hurry, to acknowledge another life—even for a fleeting moment—is to step back into the mystery and beauty of being alive.

Thank you for sharing a Saturday morning moment with me in Rebecca’s Reading Room. May your weekend be filled with small encounters of wonder and stillness.

Rebecca

Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1881–1941) was a Kentucky poet and novelist, best known for her novel “The Time of Man”. Her writing, lyrical yet rooted in realism, explored the bond between people, land, and the ordinary details of daily life. She was part of the Southern Renaissance and admired for bringing a poetic voice to rural experience.

Elizabeth’s poetry collection “Under the Tree” can be found on Gutenberg Press.

#ElizabethMadoxRoberts #Nature #PoetryInTheAfternoon #PoetryInTheEvening #PoetrySalon #TheRabbit

September Morning in Nebraska

Nebraska is my mother’s birthplace, a state of wide skies and endless fields. My own visits there remain vivid—especially September mornings when the air carried both warmth and a slight chill, as if the land itself was pausing between seasons.

When I came across this poem by C. M. Barrow, I felt as if someone had captured those memories in verse.

A September Morning in Nebraska

by C. M. Barrow

The sun has not yet risen, but his golden glow,
Lights up the misty portals of the far off east;
The wavering shadows o’er the prairies come and go,
And all the eerie sounds of night have ceased.

Nature’s own songsters, from the cotton trees,
Fill all the languorous air with melody.
The corn fields rustle in the gentle morning breeze,
And from the coming dawn the night-mist flees.

For me, this poem is more than a description of a landscape. It is a return to memory. Nebraska mornings, my mother’s voice recalling her childhood, my own fleeting visits where September shimmered with both promise and farewell.

My grandparents were farmers, and their home stood on a ridge overlooking a valley that seemed to stretch endlessly to the horizon. I remember the smell of grass in the early morning and the sound of birds settling into the dusk when we walked at night. Standing on that ridge, I felt both small and infinite—at one with nature, part of a world that was larger than myself, yet deeply familiar.

September mornings remind me of the rhythm of change, of how beauty resides in transience. The prairie teaches me to pause, to notice the shimmer of dew before it evaporates, to welcome both warmth and chill, knowing each has its season.

Until the next page turns…

Rebecca

Postscript: I searched for more information about C. M. Barrow, the poet of A September Morning in Nebraska, but very little can be found. His name doesn’t appear in standard poetry anthologies or library archives, which suggests he may have been a local or regional writer whose work was shared in newspapers or community collections rather than in widely published books.

Perhaps this is part of the beauty of poetry—it can live quietly, carried forward by a single poem that speaks across time, even if the poet remains in the shadows.

#Autumn #CMBarrow #Poetry #PoetryInTheAfternoon #PoetryInTheEvening #PoetryInTheMorning #PoetrySalon #SeptemberMorningInNebraska

Poplar Trees Are Happiest by John Russell McCarthy

John Russell McCarthy’s poem took me back years to the boreal forests of Northern Manitoba, where I grew up. I vividly recall walking among the poplars in early September. This brief, lyrical poem captures that exact feeling: trees with personalities, a landscape that speaks, and a small, radiant joy.

Poplar Trees Are Happiest

by John Russell McCarthy

Poplar trees are laughing trees,
With lilting silver call.
Willow trees droop weepingly
And never laugh at all.
Maple trees are gorgeous trees
In crimson silks and gold;
Pine trees are but sober trees,
Aloof and very old.
Black-oak trees walk sturdily,
And live oaks eager run;
The sycamores stand lazily
Beneath the summer sun.
But poplar trees are laughing trees
Wherever they may grow—
The poplar trees are happiest
Of all the trees I know.

When I close my eyes and walk back to Northern Manitoba, I hear that exact sound: the poplars talking to one another, their leaves catching the wind and replying in a chorus of silver laughter. We called it ‘the bush’— a vast wilderness, but a familiar, living place. On those walks the world felt animated, as if the trees themselves were companions, witnesses, and keepers of small joys. McCarthy’s poem reminds me that happiness can be a quiet, shared music rather than a grand display. The poem’s simple pairs—willow and poplar, maple and pine—give each tree a character, and in naming those characters the poem invites us to listen more closely to the landscape we inhabit.

About the Poet

John Russell McCarthy (1889–1973) was born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania and moved to California in 1920. His poetry appeared in “The New Yorker”, “Poetry Magazine, and other notable publications, earning him wide admiration in his time. Naturalist John Burroughs named McCarthy as one of only three poets of the early 20th century who brought both thought and emotion to their work, alongside William Vaughn Moody and Robert Loveman. Burroughs even praised McCarthy’s verse as “the best nature poetry since Emerson,” and invited him to his New York cabin in 1919, noting in his diary: “His acquaintance is the event of years to me. His poems have quality, like some rare new fruit.” Though D.H. Lawrence once dismissed one of his early poems as “nasty, obscene, vulgar in the last degree,” McCarthy’s career flourished as a poet, journalist, creative writing teacher, editor, and even forest ranger. Today, his poetry remains a reminder of the joy found in nature’s voice.

Further reading: The Waiting Hills by John Russell McCarthy on Internet Archive.

Poplar trees teach us to notice the gentle, everyday forms of happiness: the rustle of leaves, a remembered walk, the soft companionship of place. If we listen—really listen—we may find that joy is already present in the smallest motions of the world around us.

Until the next page turns, may the poplars’ laughter keep you company.

Rebecca

#JohnRusselMcCarthy #LyricPoetry #NaturePoetry #PoetrySalon #PoplarTreesAreHappiest #RebeccaSReadingRoom

A Milestone in Poetry August 1, 1915

Just had to share this moment with you.

On this day in 1915, Robert Frost’s iconic poem “The Road Not Taken” was first published in The Atlantic Monthly.

More than a century later, its opening lines still echo in our hearts:

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both…”

It’s a poem about choice, about paths and possibilities — but also about how we tell the story of our lives. A gentle reminder, today and always, that sometimes the quietest decisions become the most meaningful.

Here’s to the roads we’ve taken… and the ones we still might.

Rebecca

#Poetry #PoetrySalon #RobertFrost #TheRoadNotTaken