High Praise For Joyce Kilmer

For years I've tried to figure out The tree Joyce Kilmer wrote about. Was it an oak, or maybe elm? What was it so appealed to him That gives his simple poem so much clout? He thought that he would never see a poem lovely as a tree, Then, quick as anyone could quote one, He sat himself right down and wrote one As lovely's any poem about a tree's a right to be. What line could possibly compare To "a nest of robins in her hair"? So when next my muse is on vacation, And I am strapped for inspiration, P'rhaps I'll attempt a Kilmer imitation. Then as quick as one-two-three, I'll have a poem about a tree. But to forestall all litigation, I'll call mine "Arboreal Vegetation".