The Trees by Philip Larkin

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

The leaves fall. The tree is reborn. New green leaves come out. The tree looks anew on the outward appearance. The tree does its best to conceal its age and death resulting from the natural cycle of life and death inside its trunk which shows the rings of growth. The truth is “written down in the growth rings inside their trunks“. Trees grow older. At some point, there will be no more rings and they will die. The rings, usually a symbol of eternity, convey the opposite: the trees’ mortality. The only thing that doesn’t actually end is time.

Human beings begin new experiences and new chapters in their lives but their old experiences will always be with them. It is the experience of an individual that make up who they are. As a tree, a person will never fully lose the years that have passed them by. Their valuable experiences will be collected inside them like rings of grain.