We offer the following poems as potential sources of inspiration and food-for-thought. If you have a poem related to some aspect of resilience that you would like to share with others, please let us know via our Contact Us form.
- Optimism
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.
—Jane Hirshfield - Trees
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.— Joyce Kilmer
- Possibility
I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of Windows—
Superior—for Doors—
Of Chambers as the Cedars—
Impregnable of Eve—
And for an Everlasting Roof—
The Gambrels of the Sky—
Of visitors—the fairest—
For Occupation—This—
The spreading wide of my narrow Hands—
To gather Paradise—
— Emily Dickinson - When I am Among the Trees
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
—Mary Oliver - Arból de la esperanza
Arból de la esperanza mantente firme. [Tree of hope, stand firm.]
—Frida Kahlo, Mexican Artist
