Talking in Their Sleep / Edith M. Thomas

Talking in Their Sleep

      “You think I am dead,”
      The apple tree said,
“Because I have never a leaf to show —
      Because I stoop,
      And my branches droop,
And the dull gray mosses over me grow!
But I’m still alive in trunk and shoot;
      The buds of next May
      I fold away —
But I pity the withered grass at my root.”

      “You think I am dead,”
      The quick grass said,
“Because I have parted with stem and blade!
      But under the ground
      I am safe and sound
With the snow’s thick blanket over me laid.
I’m all alive, and ready to shoot,
      Should the spring of the year
      Come dancing here —
But I pity the flower without branch or root.”

      “You think I am dead,”
      A soft voice said,
“Because not a branch or root I own.
      I never have died,
      But close I hide
In a plumy seed that the wind has sown.
Patient I wait through the long winter hours;
      You will see me again —
      I shall laugh at you then,
Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers.”

---
Edith M. Thomas
from Selected Poems, 1926

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the European Union]

Edith M. Thomas biography