Solid Oak
The oaks are always late to shed their leaves.
They cling to vestiges of summer raiment,
Now woebegone and sere, as though it grieves
Them to remit the final scheduled payment.
The russet husks do battle with each gust
Of wind. They rasp and rattle, go to ground
Reluctantly, and only when they must;
But when it’s time, they fall without a sound.
They’ll be the very duff that hiking boots
Will tread upon in seasons soon to come;
They’ll quicken and sustain the spreading roots
Of mother-trees—the salutary sum
And substance of the boreal domain—
Which suffer many blows, but don’t complain.
first published in The Road Not Taken (2011)
C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden. Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India. His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.
C.B., I expected a poem about a table or a chest of drawers, but you’ve made me appreciate an element of Autumn. That is rare, indeed! (As soon as baseball season is over I count down the weeks till Spring Training.)
I love the way you personify the Solid Oak, one of which I have in my back yard, who silently rages against the inevitable onset of its loss but who nevertheless doesn’t complain when the inevitable occurs. I love your rhymes, especially the raiment/payment rhyme.
I’ve heard, Jeff, that most baseball bats are made from ash wood, but some are made from maple and also, possibly, oak. Oak trees come and go, and I’ve seen many that were toppled by snow and wind storms, but I see many more that emerge as seedlings from acorns distributed by gray squirrels, and these are treated as weeds. If you want to experience what might be the greatest expression of the power of acorns, then look into ordering some Iberian pork. Campo Grande is a reliable source. Yeah, rhyme rules.
A very sophisticated and elegant sonnet. The diction is truly choice: woebegone, sere, russet, duff, boreal. It almost might be a Druid’s ritual chant to a sacred oak.
Two great moments of very skillful enjambment: 1) in lines 3 and 4, the transitive verb “grieves” ends one line, but picks up its direct object (“Them”) in the following line, but “Them” is the start of a trochaic foot — a stress that it would not normally have in normal syntax. And 2) — in lines 5 and 6, the poet follows up “gust” with an unstressed preposition (“of”) that begins a normal iambic foot. The same thing happens in lines 11 and 12.
Words, Joseph, as you know, are our lifeblood, and much of our usage of those words depends upon and simultaneously determines the direction of the linguistic basis of our ability to express ideas about anything. To accusations that I enjamb more than necessary, I plead guilty, but it’s better than end-stopping everything.
Kip, I can’t conceive how anyone knowledgeable in our craft could accuse you of overusing enjambment. Enjambment is at the heart of great English poetry!
I don’t scan “Them to” (in line 4) as a trochee, but as an iamb — “grieves”, is stressed, of course, and “them” is unstressed., so “to” is promoted because it falls between two unstressed syllables. Nothing but iambs throughout. Am I wrong?
It’s a matter of taste. I generally don’t think of ordinary prepositions as stressed, and since a trochaic start to an iambic-5 line is common, it seemed more natural to me to stress “Them ” and thereby have a choriambic one-two punch to the follow-up line. But all of us scan in various ways. It’s a great sonnet no matter how you read it.
This sonnet gives me much pleasure to read, Kip. You have a gift for taking subject matter which we think we know and then astonishing the reader as you blast stereotypes out of the water. I can’t imagine how many poems have been written about trees — and yet yours stands apart with completely unexpected imagery — the remitting of the overdue payment, the russet husks doing battle, the duff of hiking shoes; and, finally, the subtle and unexpected personification of the spreading roots of mother-trees — the ones that stoically don’t complain — in the closing couplet. It’s a lot to pack into 14 lines. And I love that rhyme of “raiment” and “payment.” So masterful!
Thank you, Brian. For a fact, I like trees — a hard thing to do, right? Oaks don’t bend the way birch trees do, but they burn better. I saw a lot of palm trees when I was in Florida last winter, and most of them looked battered.
If you were here only a couple of months after Hurricane Milton (and before that Hurricane Helene and before that Hurricane Debby all three within two months), I’m not surprised if the palm trees looked a bit battered and puny. But they’re doing great now!
Then, Brian, I shall have to revisit Florida, when, I hope, the red tide will not have left thousands of dead fish stranded at the high-tide line and stinking to high heaven.
Your gardener’s love of growing things makes this poem much more profound than a mere description of a tree and its life cycle. It’s a beautiful poem.
Right now, Cynthia, the oaks have lost only about half their leaves. People in New England have learned to wait before blowing them out of their garden beds, which makes sense, but it’s a pain doing fall cutbacks (herbaceous perennials) even with only half of what’s to come littering the ground and interfering with my work — I can’t cut what I can’t see.
CB, this set of lines and rhyme direct me to the purple that many oaks sport in Autumn. Rare. Now, I’ll add the oft-maligned Sweet Gum, around this (Northern) Neck of the Virginia woods boast an unsurpassed purple that ought to make its own critics blush.
The sweet gum (Liquidambar styracifolia) is one of my favorite trees. When I was growing up in Pennsylvania we called them the easy-to-climb trees, because the branches were clean and arrayed like the rungs of a ladder. Also, we kids would sometimes engage in “sticker-bomb” fights when the fruits were ripe. I think they will grow in New England, but I don’t see many of them. Years ago I saw a lot of them used as ornamentals at a hotel in Connecticut. Who criticizes sweet gum trees, I wonder?
You go into such artistic detail here about something as seemingly-mundane as leaves falling in Autumn; you’ve imbued your clear love of the season into verse in this sonnet. Thank you for sharing it!
Well, S.A.K., I had a choice: either share it or be the only one who reads it. I write for myself, but not for myself alone.
I love a good Shakespearean sonnet and this one is beautiful. I admire your choice of title. It frames your words perfectly, and your words speak to me of a stiff upper lip and an air of dignity and dependability in the face of decay. The second stanza is striking for its deft use of onomatopoeia – “russet husks” is inspired alliteration, and I can hear their brittle battle cry… the bravery before the stoic silence… just lovely. The closing couplet echoes this sentiment, and strangely reminds me of my grandparents and all those fallen soldiers we honor in this symbolic season. I know my interpretation may sound a tad odd… but this is the beauty of poetry such as this. It leaves room for my imagination, which always dances to an off key tune. C.B. – thank you!
Buried somewhere in the SCP archives, Susan, is a poem I wrote called “United They Fall” in which I directly compared falling leaves to fallen soldiers. That you detect a similar idea in this one is probably clairvoyance on your part or evidence of recycled ideas on mine.
C.B., I hadn’t read or heard of “United They Fall” and I must thank you for alerting me to this excellent poem. I wish I could claim the power of clairvoyance, but I’m sure I just picked up on the falling leaves / fallen soldiers comparison because of my Remembrance Day mood… although, I do have a bit of a spooky, sixth-sense vibe going on…
As it happens, Susan, “United They Fall” was only reprinted here. It was also included in my first book, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder., which you might have seen.
A well observed and executed autumnal piece that dwells more on resilience than capitulation.
Thanks for the read, CB.