Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The speaker is an unnamed first-person narrator who is observing some trees with a companion.
Form and Meter
The poem is composed of five stanzas, most of which are connected with enjambments. Every set of two lines is some sort of couplet as well, giving the twenty-line poem a pleasing and definite structure.
Metaphors and Similes
The narrator compares silence to a canvas, on which can be painted elements such as "a chorus of smiles" and "a winter morning."
Alliteration and Assonance
"... what the trees try to tell us..." (ln 8-9)
Irony
The phrase "silence filled with noises" is inherently ironic, as silence is defined as the absence of noise.
Genre
Poetry, abstract impressionism
Setting
An unnamed grove of trees at some unspecified time
Tone
Simple, profound, contemplative
Protagonist and Antagonist
There is no protagonist or antagonist in this short poem, just a narrator and his friend trying to make sense of reality by means of trees.
Major Conflict
The narrator attempts to make sense of what the trees' message really means, and the reader tries even harder to make sense of what Ashbery means.
Climax
The narrator and his companion finally achieve the content state of the trees, unveiling a "silence filled with noises" that allows them to fully experience their environment.
Foreshadowing
The awe the narrator expresses at the beginning of the poem about the trees' effortless community foreshadows his eventual participation in such fellowship, seen in the last two stanzas.
Understatement
"That their merely being there / Means something" (ln 10-11)
Allusions
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
"each joining a neighbor..." (ln 2)
"Neighbor," in this case, is a metonym for "neighboring tree."
Personification
"... the trees try to tell us we are" (ln 8-9)
Hyperbole
"To meet as far this morning / From the world as agreeing / With it" (ln 4-6)
Onomatopoeia
The sound of the phrase "puzzling light" conveys some of its confusing intentionality.
