Nothing But Dead Trees

They walk below us, coming we know not whither. They come like shadows in the night, like frost in the day. They come like the storms, but leave nothing. They bring neither rain nor snow, sleet nor hail. Nothing comes to bless us when they have gone. We see them coming in the distance, and we shiver.

“They’re all dead,” they say.

“Look at these trees. Not a single leaf.”

They walk to and fro, looking us up and down--deciding our futures.

“We've won this battle,” they cry, “We've succeeded in killing the entire forest. There's nothing left.”

“Now they're ours. Their shepherds died and went to the moon long ago, but left their beloved trees behind. We shall have them. We shall take these hollow trees and build them into homes.”

They wander among my birch forest and see nothing but bare arms reaching into the moonless night, nothing but the memory of what was. Once there was life, hope, future. Now there is only us, the so called dead skins of what was.

But they don’t see the roots beneath. They don’t see us growing in the dark, in the winter, in the dead. They don’t see us stretching out in our sleep and gaining strength for spring.

Don’t deliver us from these bodies of death. Don’t deliver us up to the fires of your progress. Let us grow on, for we have not yet died.