Tree+Poetry

**The Tree and Me** There's a tree by the meadow By the sand by the sea On a hillock near a valley That belongs to me With small spring leaves Like small green dimes That cast their shadows on the grass A thousand separate times With round brown branches Like outstretched sleeves And the twigs come out as fingers And the fingers hold the leaves

**Windy Tree** Think of the muscles a tall tree grows in its leg, in its foot, in its wide-spread toes - not to tip over and fall on its nose when a wild wind hustles and tussels and blows.--- Aileen Fisher

If I were a tree I'd want to see a bird with a song on a branch of me. I'd want a quick little squirrel to run up and down and around, for fun. I'd want the cub of a bear to call, and a porcupine, big, and a tree toad, small. I'd want a katydid out of sight on one of my leaves to sing at night. And down by my roots I'd want a mouse with six little mouselings in her house.-- Aileen Fisher
 * Open House**

 If you stood with your feet in the earth Up to your ankles in the grass And you arms had leaves running over them And every once in awhile one of your leafy fingers Was nudged by a bird flying past. If the skin that covers you from top to tip Wasn't skin at all, but bark And you never moved your feet from their place In the earth But stood rooted in that one spot come Rain Wind Snow Sleet Thaw Spring Summer Winter Fall Blight Bug Day Then you would be me: A tree. //© 1972 Karla Kuskin, [|Any Me I Want To Be: Poems] Harper Collins// 