View looking up at a tall tree trunk with reddish-brown bark surrounded by green canopy

Steven Laansma/Shutterstock.com

Whenever You See a Tree

By Padma Venkatraman

From the April 2026 Issue

Learning Objective: Students will analyze a concrete poem, then use it as a mentor text to write a concrete poem of their own.

Featured Skill: Analyzing and Writing Poetry,

Standards

Listen to this poem read aloud.

Think

how many long years

this tree waited as a seed

for an animal or bird or wind or rain

to maybe carry it to maybe the right spot

where again it waited months for seasons to change

until time and temperature were fine enough to coax it

to swell and burst its hard shell so it could send slender roots

to clutch at grains of soil and let tender shoots reach toward the sun

Think how many decades or centuries it thickened and climbed and grew

taller and deeper never knowing if it would find enough water or light

or when conditions would be right so it could keep on spreading leaves

adding blossoms and dancing

Next time

you see

a tree

think

how

much

hope

it holds

Writing Prompt

A concrete poem is a poem that takes the shape of its subject on the page. Write a concrete poem about something that can give us hope or teach us lessons, as trees do in Padma Venkatraman’s poem. Your subject can be anything: a river, a mountain, a sunrise, a candle, a pet, a friend—the choice is yours.