Read the poem ‘Retirement’ by Betty Culley

This week’s poem, Betty Culley’s “Retirement,” meditates on the passage of time as embodied by pasture and tree. I love this poem’s vivid, tender simplicity, and how easily the old tree’s experience becomes human, and our own.

Culley writes poetry and young adult and middle grade novels. Her YA verse novels are “Three Things I Know Are True” and “The Name She Gave Me,” and her middle grade novels are “Down to Earth” and “The Natural Genius of Ants.” Her latest middle grade novel, “Landslide,” with Nancy Paulsen Books for Young Readers/Penguin Random House, was published in March 2026. She previously worked as an obstetrics nurse and as a pediatric home hospice nurse and lives in the small town of Mercer.

Retirement

The pasture,
green and sloping gently south
to Pattee Brook,
grew up in pine woods.
On the forest floor,
apples hard and green.
Look up, an old tree
wondering where the cows went, and why
they took the sun with them
when they left.

– Betty Culley

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Retirement,” ©2025 by Betty Culley, appears by permission of the author.

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