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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Strange Tree

Elizabeth Madox Roberts

From “Under the Tree”

AWAY beyond the Jarboe house

I saw a different kind of tree.

Its trunk was old and large and bent,

And I could feel it look at me.

The road was going on and on

Beyond, to reach some other place.

I saw a tree that looked at me,

And yet it did not have a face.

It looked at me with all its limbs;

It looked at me with all its bark.

The yellow wrinkles on its sides

Were bent and dark.

And then I ran to get away,

But when I stopped and turned to see,

The tree was bending to the side

And leaning out to look at me.