A Kingdom of Leaves

A silver maple guiltless,
silhouette against industrial sky.
Still but neighbor to the pillar,
Manufactured cloud, directing life.
High, unholy hands, a twisted community,
limbs in bending wind that
imparts the river upon the roots.
Roots that grasp, intricate beneath the grass,
sewn and interlaced, like prayer tassels
in holy knots, fastened in holy soil,
and though we did not know
the ground here is never ungracious,
never dry.
This body of unhallowed parts, set away
and set apart, intentionally separate from the
sated hollow, vacated, for gods of these woods
believe not in the life of the water.
Oh… the city dies as well,
painting gray the green in monotony of gain.
With production, the instruction becomes to straighten,
to contain beauty to rows
that do not wind or weave or contemplate or believe
a tale of overwhelming canopy.
Cities and trees, they do not leave
surroundings of self, saturated with ease.
Along these paths, both shallow and ragged,
success springs quickly and is scorched.
The freshness of water, life to all seeds,
instead suffer along parched pavement,
roll into the weeds, and there, in agony,
they forget to breathe.
Shall we call you with creation, with color,
with blessing bloomed from these crooked stems,
promising bright and light, but pale against gloom.
Ah single leaf, alight for relief,
call others to beautifully line the streets.
All pile together, decompose to compose
a cover in hot weather, a love proposed
in refreshing new soil, a deepening of prose of
the words which ground us, the water that flows,
now over the dam, now up forest hills,
now flooding with life all it seeps in and fills…