You talk to the trees.

They won't preside
over your rush of memories  -
if they hear them, they don't judge

Some of them have been here
a long time. If not as long on the earth
as you, still long enough
to keep on reaching up,
to have lost branches
but not the branching impulse,
not the surging
expression of their being,
not their place among the living
or in the land

They may have things to tell you
about roots, about service,
about the inevitability
of being true to the seed you grew from
and true to the seeds you bear.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 2,  2021