Sometimes I wonder about the society of the trees,
in those crowded forests on top of the pregnant ground,
with quiet inner dignity as if they
were the collonade to hold the sky.

It is hard to think of them as living just like me,
like echoes of humanity holding their arms up to the
charity above from Sun and clouds, features
washed away in Father Time's Ganges.

In solitude and with space like the kind
that two blademasters would give to one another in respect,
and yet en masse they stand together and
speak only in whispers like it is forbidden.

Their taste in fashion goes around in cycles,
from nakedness of winter to green of summer,
to the touch of gold that creeps like gray
does on the older human canopies.

Some oaks, some firs, some birtch and even cedar
stand as brothers do, not like in the eyes of those
who see their different leaves, but like the
different fingers of a delta.

And there, a young sprout growing just below
its mother, leaves soft as feather, not yet
hardened by the crude embrace of age
that must inevitably take its course.

Where there is life there is death,
the trees are lucky for their clock is marked
by the empyreal language of the rings,
which in death becomes an epitaph on the stump.