The Woods in New Jersey
Where there was only grey, and brownish grey,
And greyish brown against the white
Of fallen snow at twilight in the winter woods,
Now an uncanny flamelike thing, black
and sulphur-yellow, as if it were dreamed by Audubon,
Is turned upside down in a delicate cascade
Of new green leaves, feeding on whatever mites
Or small white spiders haunt underleafs at stem end.
A magnolia warbler, to give the thing a name.
The other name we give this overmuch of appetite
And beauty unconscious of itself is life.
And that that kept the mind becalmed all winter? —
The more austere and abstract rhythm of the trunks,
Vertical music the cold makes visible,
That holds the whole thing up and gives it form,
or strength — call that the law. It's made,
whatever we like to think, more of interests
than of reasons, trees reaching each their own way
for the light, to make the sort of order that there is.
And what of those deer threading through the woods
In a late snowfall and silent as the snow?
Look: they move among the winter trees, so much
the color of the trees, they hardly seem to move.
for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.