I am a tender sapling born from the earth,

Beautiful and elegant though I was born of the dirt.

With passion and love I reach for the sky,

A universal dance in a symphony of light.

Yearning for the suns undying devotion,

Each leaf a whisper of dreams soft and spoken.

I stood tall a sentinel of time,

Each moment alive, a reflection of the divine.

My bark thickening with the weight of the seasons,

Each branch a reflection of infinite freedom.

Every ring a tale of children’s laughter and grins,

Secrets of lovers initials carved upon my skin.

Through the storms that raged against my heart,

I swayed but stood tall, reaching for the stars.

Yet still I felt the gnawing pull of fate,

In the depth of my roots, shadows lurking with hate.

Whispering of an end I can’t point a branch out to,

I prayed I was mistaken, that the feeling wasn’t true.

I bore witness to the dance of life all around me,

With each passing year my heart dances to the beat.

A melody of danger reechoing in my soul,

Reminding me of a threat that’s beyond my control.

When the day came when the axe sang its cruel song,

Cutting away the life within me, what have I done wrong?

With a thud of finality deep within my core,

With evil intentions, I stood never more.

The slice of steel against my flesh, a betrayal I could not comprehend,

As I fell I wondered is the end the beginning or the beginning of my end?

I felt the earth weeping all around me,

In mourning of my lost grandeur the soil was trembling.

My limbs once the dance of all living things,

Was severed and stripped like pulling off a flies wings.

My spirit reduced to mere timber,

A tattered and torn picture as I lay and wither.

The love of the forest fading to the silence of a sawmill,

Now as I lie beneath and bear the weight of the world,

My essence transformed into a sad creaky floorboard.

I carry the echoes of my past within me,

Of what I once was reduced to the ghost of a tree.

Each creak and groan a sigh of despair,

Scared and alone there’s no breeze no air.

I long for the sunlight and all that it touches,

For the sky that no longer cradles my branches.

I am a vessel of memories, an archive of laughter and tears,

I am a keeper of ancient mysteries, a chalice holding all your tears.

A reminder of the beauty that danced in the wind,

A prison in the dark where shadows are my only friend.

I wrestle with the enigma of my being,

A chilling echo of what once was, now a fleeting thought is this what I was born to be?

While I support the weight of footfalls from above,

I ponder the nature of existence and love.

As the cycle of life binds us all together,

I’m both the past and the present, a bridge between worlds.

Though I mourn the death of majestic dreams,

I find peace in knowing I still serve a purpose or so it seems.

I am apart of something much greater,

More than a beauty of nature, a miracle from the divine creator.

A creaky witness to those that tread upon me,

A guardian of secret’s, a treasure of stories.

In my journey from roots to ruins,

I overcome the delusions and see through the illusions.

I embrace the duality of my existence,

Between my creaks and the sound of silence I listen.

For there is profound beauty, even in decay,

A truth so heavy it’s impossible to convey.

There is light in the shadows and,

Thorns in the meadows.

There’s dark storms in the sky that are followed by rainbows,

There’s majestic trees and then there’s creaky floorboards.

Where I once stood swaying and free, now I’m cut down, nailed and floored,

Chopped down by an axe, but now there’s new worlds to be explored!

—ŤerryŞalmon—