When Great Trees Fall Poem by Maya Angelou

When Great Trees Fall

     - by Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,

Rocks on distant hills shudder,

Lions hunker down in tall grasses,

And even elephants lumber after safety.

When great trees fall in forests,

Small things recoil into silence,

Their senses eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,

The air around us becomes

Light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.

Our eyes, briefly,see with a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

Examines, gnaws on kind words

Unsaid, promised walks never taken.

Great souls die and our reality, 

Bound to them, takes leave of us.

Our souls, dependent upon their nurture,

Now shrink, wizened.

Our minds, formed

And informed by their radiance, fall away.

We are not so much maddened

As reduced to the unutterable ignorance

Of dark, cold caves.

And when great souls die,

After a period peace blooms,

Slowly and always irregularly. 

Spaces fill with a kind of

Soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

To be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. 

Be and be better. 

For they existed.