When Great Trees Fall
When Great Trees Fall - meaning Summary
Grief and Gradual Renewal
Maya Angelou's poem considers the death of influential people and its ripple effects. Using the fall of great trees as a central image, it traces stages of communal and personal response: initial shock and retreat, a stark sharpening of memory and regret, a period of diminished identity, and finally a slow, uneven renewal that acknowledges loss while inspiring improvement. The poem ends with a hopeful imperative to live better because those figures existed.
Read Complete AnalysesWhen 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 withva hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, vpromised 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.
I love this poem too. I met Ms Angelou because I once lived in Winston-Salem, NC. She was as magnificent in person as she is with her words.