Be as Branches

Mortal flesh, is not your place in the ground?--Why do you stare so
At the bright planet serene in the clear green evening sky above the many-coloured streaked clouds?--
Your brows drawn together as if to chide, your mouth set as if in anger.

Learn to love blackness while there is yet time, blackness
Unpatterned, blackness without horizons.

Beautiful are the trees in autumn, the emerald pines
Dark among the light-red leaves of the maple and the dark-red
Leaves of the white oak and the indigo long
Leaves of the white ash.
But why do you stand so, staring with stern face of ecstasy at the autumn leaves,
At the boughs hung with banners along the road as if a procession were about to pass?

Learn to love roots instead, that soon above your head shall be as branches.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)