"Poplar Memory"

My previous two posts considered the possibility that our souls may leave remnants behind when our stay here comes to an end.  I should have noted at the outset of this excursion that, in bringing up this subject, I am not attempting to be profound or metaphysical or anything of that sort.

As is always the case, I am merely idly ruminating.  This detour was occasioned by a small poem by Mary Coleridge, not by a weighty contemplation upon Our Place In The Universe.  There shall be no ontology here.

In the interest of further idle rumination, the following poem by Patrick Kavanagh is, I think, a lovely instance of how we may leave something of our soul behind.

                                     David Jones, "The Storm Tree" (1948)

                    Poplar Memory

I walked under the autumned poplars that my father planted
On a day in April when I was a child
Running beside the heap of suckers
From which he picked the straightest, most promising.

My father dreamt forests, he is dead --
And there are poplar forests in the waste-places
And on the banks of drains.

When I look up
I see my father
Peering through the branched sky.

Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems (Penguin/Allen Lane 2004).

         David Jones, "The View from Gatwick House, Essex, April" (1946)