Now the children have climbed into the trees though it is winter. They have done so because of an ancient textbook—DNA or universal subconscious—it doesn’t matter. Look at them, they are both preoccupied and disinterested.
{Marginalia} True: the writer hasn’t shown the children. Accordingly you have only propositions. The children high in the snowy branches look like scientists or aesthetes. But are they boys and girls? Girls only?
{Marginalia} The poet is full of ideas but stingy.
So the poet goes back to work: the year, 1919. Finland. Starvation. The children were sent into the branches since the elders believed air was cleaner up there. The adults imagined influenza was down by the roots.
{Marginalia} Images make poems, facts make essays. One little girl in a tall birch had such impudent beautiful eyes. Eyes blue-going-to-grey. “Wisdom eyes” as her grandfather called them.
Planet of the Blind 