I came upon an ancient tree,

Who gazed with gnarled branches' eyes:

And stretched its limbs to deadened skies,

Roots caked in fruitless misery.

Its hair fell low, in weeping throes-

Eyes hollow, streaked with painful screams,

And as its skin is pecked by crows

Its blood gives way to broken dreams-

Yet could I speak, to offer life

Or bane to rippling seas of pain?

But maggots surface in its strife

Hang bone and flesh where love had lain

Within it lay an ancient seed

Entangled roots beneath dead earth,

Yet as it sprouts, rain chokes its birth

And rises, parched, a strangled weed-

The tree bends low upon its cane,

Back arched with flames and sharpened thorn:

For years of struggle, bitter vain-

To break away with hopeful scorn.

I lingered, saw the broken earth

Cracked, thirsty for the current's flow,

Yet frost remains within the hearth:

And dust cakes skin where touches go-

Too long it lived, this wounded tree,

Too far its veins have dried with soot

Yet as my eyes, unsullied, see

Absence of soil, or lover's foot-

None seem to hear its piercing cries,

Its branches twist, reach desperately;

Yet even I, with saddened eyes

Can only watch its dark demise.

It groans to heavens, blinded skies

Its bloodied mouth in hollow sighs;

It digs within the sunken earth

Uproots its past, ground's twisted mirth-

And as I watch, her heart implodes

And veins burst forth from hidden skin,

For there never were an outside node

To quench the deeper dams within-

And as I watch, she screams a cry

To wisened earth, unhearing sky-

Her blood bursts forth within the night

Red stars of pain in holy light!

I came before an ancient tree,

And watched it wilt, dried blasphemy-

And as its blood flows like the sea:

I see reflected, depths of me.