Abstract

For this assignment, I analyze a poem that we read in my other FIQWS class , its themes, and reflected on it. The poem I analyze was Victoria Chang’s “The trees that witness Everything,” which aim at exploring the subject by which the tone and simplicity create important themes related to nature and human perception. The aim of the assignment was to show how I interpreted the poem by its softer language used by Chang contributed significantly to the realization that accepting and appreciating natural existence without attempting to add complicated events to the natural reality has a important impact on human life. My target audience for this analysis was my peers and professors, who have an interest in the themes related to the analysis of poetry, self-expression, and self-awareness with regards to the preservation and exploration of the natural environment through awareness. Through the completion of the assignment.

The trees that witness Everything” by Victoria Chang, when I first read this title I
understood what the poem was about how nature just exists. But as I read more and
more I discovered a whole message that resonated with me in a way. The first three
stanzas of the poem tell you that message, Ms. Chang states “They are not
wisdom… or freedom or history…They are not what’s lost…They are nothing but
wild geese.” Those lines challenged human tendency in finding meaning in everything.
The geese are just wild geese, not metaphors for freedom or loss or not significant
impact of history, they just exist. The poem is about finding meaning in nature stillness
and not forcing things upon it. Ms. Chang talks about spring and its changes, her choice
of words are soft toned that makes me realize not everything is complicated. By using
statements like “they are nothing but” … she simplifies the nature of an object or animal
to its simplest form. In the poem she talks about different stages in life, for example in
the topic of “The first year” She uses words like stretching. And solitude. Her tone
throughout the poem is just softening; it slows down everything and just lets us be.
I sat and wondered for a long time what that meant, and it evoked a specific emotion in
me of sonder. Back when I was in high school, I was interested in psychology, so I read
a lot about human nature and I discovered that the majority of people have FOMO.
Which is fear of missing out, where we try to do everything that we want to experience
before dying, so most people try to find meaning in everything, one of my closest
friends experienced it and he kept telling me how everything was so complicated for
him whether it’s a job, or schoolwork, or just his everyday things and how every
interaction he tried to make his words weight, I did not understand it at first, but I am a
very empathetic person so I felt bad and i started to question why it happened for him
but I didn’t realize that it’s just human nature to do have that tendency. Often, we try to
diagnose ourselves with problems that aren’t really problems but are just our nature.
This poem helped me realize that when something that just exists, we need to let it be
and not mess with it.
In conclusion I think what made me tap into that realization is Ms. Chang tone of
softness and just tranquility and simple truth. In the topic of “The first year” She stated
this”
The year after death
is full of stretching, were things
pull so hard your bones
break, because they were never
bones, were always solitude
I interpreted these words as saying that what we think is bad is really bad. Change feels
like it’s destroying us. We start to hate the things that we used to enjoy and we question
it instead of growing with it. Or we stop a habit some people become quieter for
some they are more outgoing, and we think it’s a bad thing, but we are just like nature a
tree loses its leaves every year but one time it grows to become something more
prettier., It taught me that change isn’t supposed to be feared. Her tone of softness and
simplification helped me get to that point.
Academy of American Poets. “From “the Trees Witness Everything”” Poets.org, 2025,
poets.org/poem/trees-witness-everything.