Let me listen.
Let me not know what to say.
Let me receive the world
as it slurs and shrieks,
hums and whispers,
speaks and bleats.
Let me lean ever closer in.
There are walls I have built
in my ears.  There is so much
I would rather not hear.
Let me listen.
Let me receive with wonder.
Let all be worthy of note.
Let me be witness, eavesdropper, spy.
Let me never pretend
to be deaf.
Let the world slip into me
and change me
as light changes a room.
Let me be silent, let me listen,
and in listening,
let me be new.

​    - Rosemary Wahtola Trommer

There's a place between two stands of trees
where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread,
but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light-
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you anything?
Because you still listen,
because in times like these to have you listen at all,
it's necessary to talk about trees.

   -Adrienne Rich