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Of Leaves and Longings
An anthology of tree poems
Edited by Faiza Anum
Daastan Publishing
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Daastan Publishing 2026
First Published in Pakistan by Daastan
Text copyrights © Faiza Anum
Book Design copyright © Anshra Zahid
The moral rights of the writer, illustrator, and editor have been asserted.
All rights reserved
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or distributed in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Print: ISBN 978-627-526-080-6
E-Book: ISBN 978-627-526-081-3
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“I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.”
—Joyce Kilmer
Contents
Am I the Moulsari Tree, too?. 24
Morning Whispers of the Willow.. 30
Sakura: The Cherry Blossoms. 39
Norfolk Island Pine (Araucaria) 47
Preface
This anthology began on a small, tree-lined lawn at Lahore College for Women University, on a morning when the air itself felt heavy—not only with the familiar warmth of a Lahore spring but also with the unspoken weight of the city’s silent ecological fray. I had asked my students in the Dynamics of Creative Writing course to step outside, and to choose one tree, not just as a subject for verse, but as a living witness to a world under pressure, to touch its bark, to listen to what it might say in a time of vanishing shade, of breathable air grown precious, of a city losing its green in plain sight.
Every tree begins as a seed, a small, quiet promise held in the dark. It grows not in haste, but in patient conversation with the earth, the sky, and the silent passage of seasons. In the same way, every poem in this anthology began as a seed: an observation, a memory, a moment of stillness before a tree. Of Leaves and Longing therefore emerged from that moment—from the quiet, determined act of looking closely at what we still have, before it slips into memory. In a country where deforestation, urbanization, and climate distress are not abstract threats but everyday realities, these forty-one poems are more than creative assignments. They are quiet acts of attention in an inattentive time. They are love letters to beings that give us oxygen, shade, and solace, but receive neglect in return.
I have arranged this collection into three movements, much like the rings within a trunk. The first section, Rooting Memory, homes poems that listen to what trees remember—histories pressed into bark, echoes under shade, roots that cling to soil and story alike. The second section, From Whispers and Shade records the personal quiet and comfort found in a tree’s presence outside a window, in a yard, or along a path. The final section, Between Blooms and Being, celebrates trees in their expressive glory: serving as emblems of hope, joy, and becoming.
In curating these pages, I was struck not only by the vividness of imagery, the “braids of time” in a banyan’s hanging roots, the “pink silks” of a kachnar in spring, but by the emotional honesty woven through each line. You will find poems that grieve a tree’s loneliness, that trace the scars on bark like lines on a patient’s face, that hear in the rustle of leaves not just poetry, but a plea. These budding poets do not shy away from loneliness, longing, or fragility. A tree can be a “silent slave” to the sky, a “pathetic” solitary figure in a yard, a “weeping” witness to change. Yet in nearly the same breath, it is also a symbol of endurance, a giver of shade “without discrimination,” a “quiet intruder” who offers connection. This duality, strength and vulnerability, permanence and ephemerality, is exactly where these poems bloom.
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