At midnight, the tree,
it teetered and fell
and it's always assumed
it died from years.
But, maybe it died from
loneliness instead?
Maybe it no longer
had the heart to stand.
Its trunk bears its scars,
like that August
it was smitten by a bolt
and almost flamed out.
Or the initials gouged
deeply in its side
by a life with a knife,
to express and confess
a once-burning love
that's long since gone.
Its felling exposes
the secrets it kept,
its abandoned nests,
the confessions
it held onto
from those who sat
under it and wept.
Two hawks scatter around it
in a circular swell;
they say their goodbyes
to the tree where it lies.
At the break of dawn
the hawks are gone and
the sun rises up in the sky.
© Sherri Brannon
It's been awhile. I've been filling my poetry journal with page after page of thoughts, but having a hard time forming them into cohesive poems. The struggle is real! (photo taken with my iphone and edited with various apps).
