{"id":99103,"date":"2016-06-09T17:16:11","date_gmt":"2016-06-09T21:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=99103"},"modified":"2016-06-09T17:16:11","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T21:16:11","slug":"becoming-a-redwood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/06\/09\/becoming-a-redwood\/","title":{"rendered":"Becoming a Redwood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Trees_and_sunshine\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dana Gioia\u2019s poem \u201cBecoming a Redwood\u201d appeared in our Summer 1991<\/a> issue. His latest collection\u00a0is <\/em>Pity the Beautiful<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds
start up again. The crickets, the invisible
toad who claims that change is possible,<\/p>\n

And all the other life too small to name.
First one, then another, until innumerable
they merge into the single voice of a summer hill.<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s hard to stand still, hour after hour,
fixed as a fencepost, hearing the steers
snort in the dark pasture, smelling the manure.<\/p>\n

And paralyzed by the mystery of how a stone
can bear to be a stone, the pain
the grass endures breaking through the earth\u2019s crust.<\/p>\n

Unimaginable the redwoods on the far hill,
rooted for centuries, the living wood grown tall
and thickened with a hundred thousand days of light.<\/p>\n

The old windmill creaks in perfect time
to the wind shaking the miles of pasture grass,
and the last farmhouse light goes off.<\/p>\n

Something moves nearby. Coyotes hunt
these hills and packs of feral dogs.
But standing here at night accepts all that.<\/p>\n

You are your own pale shadow in the quarter moon,
moving more slowly than the crippled stars,
part of the moonlight as the moonlight falls,<\/p>\n

Part of the grass that answers the wind,
part of the midnight\u2019s watchfulness that knows
there is no silence but when danger comes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dana Gioia\u2019s poem \u201cBecoming a Redwood\u201d appeared in our Summer 1991 issue. 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