We are Sitting On a High Green Hill

Jozsef Koszta

We are Sitting On a High Green Hill

and how we got here I cannot tell;

I have a basket and a little flute

which I play to coax the flowers out;

we call each other by quiet secret names

and our clothes are poor but our hair is tame

- we are neither bad nor good

and below us is a dark green wood.

we dream of the big world we cannot enter

and we sit till we silently turn into winter;

the fruit is all gone and our shoes are thin;

by night we lie down to let the darkness in

- it is only by night that I cannot bear

the cold, or the tired clothes we wear.

we dream of the big world we cannot enter

and we have no money and we turn into winter;

when the next spring comes we will melt until

 we run like rivers down the high green hill.

Gwendolyn MacEwan

This poem draws me in, and I don’t know why. I have felt this way, the sense of having been enchanted, like being under a spell that immobilizes me. Not knowing why I am frozen in place, longing to be part of the “big world”, but somehow not having the ability to enter in or join it. This poem makes me think of a tree, too. It’s as if the speaker is both a person and a part of nature. Like a tree is rooted in one place, and the seasons change around it and change it as well – the freezing and melting (which makes me think of water, so when immobile she is like a tree, when melted, like water she can run anywhere).  I don’t know what this poem means, but the questions and images it weaves together feel deeply personal to me. This again is a beautiful mystery – a stranger writes a poem that says what she means, I read it, and recognize something of myself. Maybe people are truly like trees, our roots running underground meet and touch and connect and spark like synapses. Maybe poetry simply follows those sparks.