Planting A Sequoia Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDE FGAHH IHJKH BLHMN OPGQF| All afternoon my brothers and I have worked in the orchard | A |
| Digging this hole laying you into it carefully packing the soil | B |
| Rain blackened the horizon but cold winds kept it over the Pacific | C |
| And the sky above us stayed the dull gray | D |
| Of an old year coming to an end | E |
| - | |
| In Sicily a father plants a tree to celebrate his first son's birth | F |
| An olive or a fig tree a sign that the earth has one more life to bear | G |
| I would have done the same proudly laying new stock into my father's orchard | A |
| A green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs | H |
| A promise of new fruit in other autumns | H |
| - | |
| But today we kneel in the cold planting you our native giant | I |
| Defying the practical custom of our fathers | H |
| Wrapping in your roots a lock of hair a piece of an infant's birth cord | J |
| All that remains above earth of a first born son | K |
| A few stray atoms brought back to the elements | H |
| - | |
| We will give you what we can our labor and our soil | B |
| Water drawn from the earth when the skies fail | L |
| Nights scented with the ocean fog days softened by the circuit of bees | H |
| We plant you in the corner of the grove bathed in western light | M |
| A slender shoot against the sunset | N |
| - | |
| And when our family is no more all of his unborn brothers dead | O |
| Every niece and nephew scattered the house torn down | P |
| His mother's beauty ashes in the air | G |
| I want you to stand among strangers all young and emphemeral to you | Q |
| Silently keeping the secret of your birth | F |
Dana Gioia
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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