I’ve tried to imagine trees.
Thin giants with boisterous heads
mirrored in down-reaching roots
and filmy almost translucent
solar panels unfurled along their limbs.

A protective layer called bark
sometimes scaly or it could be smooth as skin.
And their only movement was in growth
each year of the sun adding a ring of width
some meters to their up yearn
to the sky and down stretch in the nourishing soil.*

They lived as long as (some longer than) we do.
Cradled all sorts of mythical beasts – beetles,
bees, a quick thing called a squirrel, even those
with feathery wings and twiggy toes.**

But let’s focus just now on the one
tree and then another near it.
Some say they spoke among themselves
feeding oxygen to the sky their aspiration
a gift of breath to us oh here we go again.

Why do all my musings come back
to this our crime? To learn too late
what we might have known all along
that recollection cannot match the
thing remembered. That death
comes slowly until it doesn’t. That
more goes with the rustling of leaves
than their undeciphered whisper.
I can almost imagine a tree.

*Next week’s imaginative reflection.

**See annual celebration of Earthian Nature.