Gallery
Acorn Woodpecker, Photograph © 2018 Bonnie Grzesiak
I robbed the Woods—
The trusting Woods.
The unsuspecting Trees
Brought out their Burs and mosses
My fantasy to please.
I scanned their trinkets curious—I grasped—I bore away—
What will the solemn Hemlock—
What will the Oak tree say?
–Emily Dickinson, 1859
USS Constitution. Courtesy, United States Naval Institute.
So Dido pleads and
so her desolate sister takes him the tale of tears
again and again. But no tears move Aeneas now.
The Fates bar the way
and heaven blocks his gentle, human ears.
As firm as a sturdy oak grown tough with age
when the North winds blasting off the Alps compete.
Fighting left and right, to wrench it from the earth,
and the winds scream, trunk shudders, its leafy crest
its roots stretching as deep into the dark world below
as its crown goes towering toward the gales of heaven,
so firm the hero stands.
–Virgil, Aeneid, c. 19 BCE
The Oak and the Reed, Achille Etna Michallon (1796–1822) © The Fitzwilliam Museum; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
