Poet's Corner: Sonoma County's Nell Griffith Wilson brings 'Weeping Willows' to life
Thanks to weeks of good rain and the sun’s welcome reappearance, the willows that abound around Sonoma County are beginning to bud and leaf out. Soon, their long, slender branches will begin to offer dappled shade.
In literature, the willow has long been a symbol of peaceful ease or quiet knowledge. Nell Griffith Wilson, one of Sonoma County’s most beloved poets of the early 20th century, brought the trees to life as peaceful old men in “Weeping Willows,” content in their retirement to happily shade the sheep and host the choirs of passing song birds. What’s most striking about this poem is that, in the end, Wilson uses it to eulogize her famous father, Nathaniel Griffith, who she had just lost and who was considered the grandfather of the Gravenstein apple.
“Weeping Willows”
Weeping willow trees
are peaceful trees,
Like old men with long beards
Dreaming in the sun,
Old men at rest
With all their labor done;
Men who held life close
And found it good,
who have not only dreamed
But practiced brotherhood;
Men who have met sorrow
And accepted loss,
Yet garnered from the years
More of its laughter
Than its tears;
Whose hearts have held no room
For bitterness;
Weavers who have never let
The thread of gold
Slip from the loom.
They sway,
These weeping willow trees,
In graceful acquiescence
To the breeze,
And through their curtained coolness
Birds come and go
upon their singing way;
And sheep have made
a rendezvous with drowsiness
Within their mottled shade;
There is no sadness
In weeping willow trees
Only a quiet gladness.
They stand so tranquil
In the sun
Like kindly old men
With all their labor done.
My father - he was one of these.
Weeping willow trees
Are peaceful trees.
From “Deeper Harvest: ?Gleanings from the Valley of the Moon” (Banner Press, 1936).
Iris Jamahl Dunkle is Sonoma County’s poet laureate. She writes a bi-weekly column about poetry.
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