Poetry for a Future
The Trees Are Leaving This World
A poem about trees leaving this world and their capacity to transform emotions
Published in
3 min readJul 15, 2020
The Trees Are Leaving This World
Your bark is rough,
your wounds are dark,
your leaves are brown and falling.
They say bacteria are eating you.
What’s eating me,
you ask.
And I howl to the moon
shining through
your broken branches.
Soft, reflected light.
Calm, and cool, and wise.
My grief is a knot
in my stomach.
My anger is a fierce fire
spitting out of
my third eye.
My throat is a bottleneck.
Hoarse sounding cracks
are there, instead of
rational words.
And the tree is waiting patiently.
Put your hands
on my dark wounds,
you say.
