Trees Need Not Walk the Earth by David Rosenthal ( A Poem for Earth Day)

Trees need not walk the earth

For beauty or for bread;

Beauty will come to them

Where they stand.

Here among the children of the sap

Is no pride of ancestry:

A birch may wear no less the morning

Than an oak.

Here are no heirlooms

Save those of loveliness,

In which each tree

Is kingly in its heritage of grace.

Here is but beauty’s wisdom

In which all trees are wise.

Trees need not walk the earth

For beauty or for bread;

Beauty will come to them

In the rainbow—

The sunlight—

And the lilac-haunted rain;

And bread will come to them

As beauty came:

In the rainbow—

In the sunlight—

In the rain.

 David H. Rosenthal (1945-1992)

David Rosenthal was an American author, poet, editor and translator. Much of his prose work was on the history of jazz and his work as a translator centered on the translation of works by Catalan writers.