UMBERTO SABA
“The Little Tree”
It’s raining hard today.
The day is more like night,
the spring is more like fall,
and in the yard a driving wind lays waste
to the little tree that, seeming not to, stands
steady and firm; it seems among the plants
like a too-green adolescent grown too tall.
You watch it. It may be
your pity stirs for all of those white flowers
the north wind strips from it; and they are fruit,
sweet preserves we set
aside for winter, those fallen flowers spread
across the grass. And your vast maternity
aches for them, all.