[lonnarin]

Woodlands

How could there ever be
a thing as wretched as a tree?

Dormantly yearning to race the rock to nowhere
Every Autumn shedding, like an old man losing hair
To be chewed inside and chattered
with squirrel droppings aptly scattered
in the gullet of your trunk
Protected by the activists who may
use your corpse for a hierophant staff one day
the totality of existence just to make more junk.

Termites tunneling veins through the rings of your heart
axemen marching, determined to rip you apart
Oh how wretched it is to be a tree
bereft of gender, love or sexuality

Should I drink, must I pray for rain?
Should I think, would others hear my pain?
Should I cry out, would anybody hear me?
Should I dry out, what would be left of me?

Stoic is the soldier standing ever still
watching kin crash down from yon wooded hill
Helpless be he with no legs to walk free
Nothing's more wretched than to be a tree.