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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Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year.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
[th(e)reat] → siege engine Trace Howard DePass 10/19/2020
[My ancestors are empty words] Kerry Carnahan 10/18/2020
From “Will There Be Singing” Juliana Spahr 10/17/2020
He, Too Solmaz Sharif 10/16/2020
[untitled] Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta 10/15/2020
Time-Lapse Video of Trans Woman Collapsing Inward Like a Dying Star Joshua Jennifer Espinoza 10/14/2020
Melancholia C. Dale Young 10/13/2020
Flying Down the Five heidi andrea restrepo rhodes 10/12/2020
Love in the City José Martí 10/11/2020
The Red Poppy Louise Glück 10/10/2020

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