Through the trees

 

Through the trees,

that crowning archway of leaves -

a tendril window, a petrified

doorway through

which I can never leave. A kingdom

I can never claim as my own.

 

My knotted gnarly limbs locked in

statuesque reach,

my splintering branches

only stretch

upwards through

the green skylight eaves

toward the sunlight

that the cracks in

the sky weave into

a patterned blanket

of tranquillity.

 

But I'll never set foot

upon that lush green,

I'll never roll on those

hills so serene,

I can but only dream

of an open sea,

as only puddles have I seen.

For my eyes have

rolled for centuries,

yet never moved an inch.

 

Under my callused bark

I have ringed my storied lifetime,

the grief, the sadness,

and the lost prime of a seedling

growing free.

A timelapse of history,

a circular map of

yesterday, but tomorrow

is always too far away.

Not sketched into my soul,

not etched upon my skin,

like a heart left by two

young saplings huddled

from the cold.

 

My roots are

too embedded. Too tangled,

too tightly packed, my body

wrapped in moss, skin too

weathered to amount to much.

And the feathered wings

Have made my broken skin

their soil, the furry flowers are rolling

into furballs on untethered feet,

as they fleet excitedly around

my static bones,

and the orange blur of fuzzy swirls

ruffle the foliage of my

neighbourhood searching for nourishment,

and shelter from the world.

 

My friends are here, standing beside me -

a family tree of ancestry.

So, I just stare through the canopy

and think how happy I am to just be.