A Tree

Like yellow spots are the golden leaves hanging from the trees

Like capillaries and dendrites, appendages glowing in the fall

Whose air is crisp and sere as Poe would say, but not

In that same haunting way as if walking towards a grave

Built up with stones like an evil mark to remind the living

Where they are heading, what they’re becoming–

No one thinks this wrong or foolish to mark and mind

Things like death and pain and sorrow when each day’s

Sleep cures these things, we do forget our dreams,

Why not some realities?

White is the bark like ghosts and just as stark,

Thin and bare with blackened core revealed where white

Skin has been torn away–the hollow wind

Has had its way with the white ghouls that rise like posts:

Tall, thin, gaunt sentries and spectres looming high above

But ignored: intangible beings so firm and strong,

Forgotten so fast; for what deeds did they do

That would merit memories to last for more than a day or two?

This is the definition of man.

Black is the core, burnt by time,

Ashen but not broken, more sturdy than girders

Molded out of some mighty metal

That is buried head end down into the hardened ground

So that while we even see some black scars of under carriage

The massive brain is hidden still, along with its

Offshoots–so that man makes a tree and does not

See himself in it anymore than the tree can see

That in it is life, yet man made it so and does not know.