Quotes

These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor,

There is no confirmation as such, but one can fairly confidently assume that what is amazing here are “some trees.” The imagery of the trees connecting to each initiates the theme of connecting with another person within an orderly society expecting certain conventions. The trees are so close that they seem to be right next to each other from a distance and, one assumes, looking identical or least indistinguishable from each other. But each tree is different, of course. Just like people.

as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I

The connection between trees and people is cemented by the connection of the line about speech being a performance to the trees and the use of enjambment to connect the last line of the first stanza to the first line of the second stanza. Everything is connected here, but—as indicated by the need and desire for these two to “arrange a chance meeting” far from the world—everything is individualized as well.

And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,

Here beneath the trees, the pressure to make communication a performance art is removed and the two can be themselves. They don’t have to invent anything; they can just sit there and enjoy the serenity of being themselves with the noisy filter of judgment.

A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,

Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.

A canvas and a chorus. A winter morning with puzzling light. Imagery of things that are not real but are recreations of reality or a performance. The happiness brought on by the ability to be themselves is ironically juxtaposed by imagery of communication still being a performance. Why? Because—more irony—it is a performance in the sense that it is not taking place in the real world far away. These smiles are only temporary and so, in a sense, no more real than the reticence to display genuine emotion back in that real world.