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The only daily poetry series publishing new work by today’s poets.

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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Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year.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
Envy Emelihter Kihleng 05/13/2022
in our chant of the creation of the world leilani portillo 05/12/2022
Contact Zone Imaikalani Kalahele 05/11/2022
Whānau Ngaio Simmons 05/10/2022
The Flame Tree Evelyn Flores 05/09/2022
[The city breaks in houses to the sea, uneasy with waves,] Charles Reznikoff 05/08/2022
Do/Do Not Nisha Atalie 05/07/2022
For Mauna a Wākea Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio 05/06/2022
From “What kind of times are these?” Penina Ava Taesali 05/05/2022
Love in a Time of Covid-19 Craig Santos Perez 05/04/2022

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