Trees

Trees are an essential part of the poem due to the poet’s inspiration, an older poem which argued that spending one’s energy on talking or writing about trees was a superficial pursuit. Here, the trees fill two symbolic roles: in the first instance, the trees act as a kind of shield for inflammatory ideas, such as the two trees that harbour the house of persecuted people. The poem’s closing line, “it’s necessary / to talk about trees” (Lines 15-16) may suggest that it’s necessary to speak out in subversive ways. In the second, trees act as a metaphor for art and the natural world; the speaker argues that to care for one’s spiritual and mental well-being, one must engage with natural beauty as well as social politics.

Mushrooms

In the second stanza, the speaker goes looking for mushrooms “at the edge...