Dorianne Laux

Dorianne Laux (1952- ) was born in Augusta, Maine. She received a BA from Mills College in 1988. in 2020 her book Only as the Day is Long was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has taught creative writing at the University of Oregon, Pacific University, and North Carolina State University; she has also led summer workshops at Esalen in Big Sur. Dorianne has won many awards and received many fellowships.

The pines rub their great noise

into the spangled dark, scratch

their itchy boughs against the house,

that moan’s mystery translates roughly

into drudgery of ownership: time

to drag the ladder from the shed,

climb onto the roof with a saw

between my teeth, cut

those suckers down.

I want to sleep

and dream the life of trees, beings

from the muted world who care

nothing for Money, Politics, Power,

Will or Right, who want little from the night

but a few dead stars going dim, a white owl

lifting from their limbs, who want only

to sink their roots into the wet ground

and terrify the worms or shake

their bleary heads like fashion models

or old hippies. If trees could speak,

they wouldn’t, only hum some low

green note, roll their pinecones

down the empty streets and blame it,

with a shrug, on the cold wind.

— Dorianne Laux from 'The Life of Trees'