Rutgers @-@ Newark English professor and poet Rachel Hadas described the poem as being " rather slight " although it " is free of irony and self consciousness , except that little reference to fools like me at the end , which I find kind of charming . " Scholar Mark Royden Winchell point out that Kilmer 's depiction of the tree indicate the possibility that he had several different people in mind because of the variety of anthropomorphic descriptions . Winchell posit that if the tree described was to be a single human being it would be " an anatomically deformed one . "