Dilemma of the Elm

In summer elms are made for me.
I walk ignoring them, and they
Ignore my walking in a way
I like in any elegant tree.

Fountain of the elm is shape
For something I have felt and said.
In winter to hear the lonely scrape
Of rooty branches overhead

Should make me only half believe
An elm had ever a frond of green-
Faced by the absence of a leaf
Forget the fair elms I have seen.

(A wiry fountain, black upon
The little landscape, pale-blue with snow-
Elm of my summer obscurely gone
To leave me another elm to know.)

Instead, I paint it with my thought,
Not knowing, hardly, that I do;
The elm comes back I had forgot,
I see it green, absurdly new,

Grotesquely growing in the snow.
In winter, an elm’s a double tree;
In winter all elms trouble me.
But in summer elms are made for me:
I can ignore the way they grow.