The Woods in New Jersey

The Woods in New Jersey
Robert Hass

Where there was only grey, and brownish grey,
And greyish brown against the white
Of fallen snow at twilight in the winter woods,
Now an uncanny flame-like thing, black
and sulphur-yellow, as if it were dreamed by Audubon,
Is turned upside down in a delicate cascade
Of new green leaves, feeding on whatever mites
Or small white spiders haunt undersides at stem end.
A magnolia warbler, to give the thing a name.
The other name we give this overmuch of appetite,
And beauty unconscious of itself, is life.
And that that kept the mind becalmed all winter?--
The more austere and abstract rhythm of the trunks,
Vertical music the cold makes visible
That holds the whole thing up and gives it form,
Or strength--call that the law. It's made,
whatever we like to think, more of interests
than of reasons, trees reaching each their own way
for the light, to make a sort of order unawares.
And what of those deer threading through the woods
In a late snowfall and silent as the snow?
They are the mind, I think, in jurisprudence, or in art.
Look: they move among the winter trees, so much
the color of the trees, they hardly seem to move.