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Poem-a-day

The Meaning of Trees

Split the trunk of an ancient one.  
Count the rings like hidden weddings brought to light.  
Know I’ve been wanting to come to die here,  
for the longest while. My brown limbs as roots.

White men I’ve longed for have walked face-first  
into the rainforest and misunderstood it so 
beautifully. Sonnets to the otherness they find dripping  
from the stems of their long fingers.

After I fuck them, will you eat them raw? 

Trees, I want to die and die in you. No other arms. 
No other branches coroneting the sky.  
No other aviaries for corbeau and kiskadee. Kiss me. 

Before I was awaiting death in the life I hold now,  
plump and feral as a grass-fed lamb, I was 

Yours. I planned how I would construct my funerary bower  
in your arms, gird myself all over 
with liana, a blanket of sphagnum moss plucked from  
your bedroom floor. My eyelids green.

Copyright © 2025 by Shivanee Ramlochan. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 18, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

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Shivanee Ramlochan

Shivanee Ramlochan
Photo credit: Elechi Todd
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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Randall Mann is the Guest Editor of August. Read or listen to a Q&A with Mann about his curatorial process, and learn more about the 2025 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
Remember the Boys Rachel McKibbens 01/23/2020
Winter Constance Merritt 01/22/2020
When We’re in Bed and You Take Out Your Mouth Guard, I Know It’s On Melissa Crowe 01/21/2020
Bird Niki Herd 01/20/2020
Music Alice Cary 01/19/2020
Thoughts Myra Viola Wilds 01/18/2020
Sestina Marci Nelligan 01/17/2020
Brown Love Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha 01/16/2020
Foley Catheter Kimberly Johnson 01/15/2020
Nice Voice Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner 01/14/2020

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