A Tree’s Perspective of Humanity

How weird these two-leggeds are,
That they miss the point of life.
Always racing toward somewhere,
As if stillness were a sin,
As if the world must be conquered
Rather than conversed with.

They do not listen to the soil.
They pave it.
Do not kneel to the stream.
They bottle it.
Do not honor the sun.
They block it with glass and steel,
Calling this progress.

They speak of growth
As if it were only upward—
More, faster, taller—
But I have known growth
To be a deepening.
Roots first.
Then the rest.

They fear death
Like it is the end,
Yet I have dropped a thousand leaves
And never once mourned.
I give them freely to the wind,
Knowing what falls feeds what rises.

They chop and burn and dig,
Calling it improvement,
Yet build houses with no windows
To the stars.
They think themselves wise
Because they remember the past,
But I remember the future
In each seed.

I have stood still through empires
And watched them crumble
Because they forgot
That what stands the longest
Moves the slowest,
Speaks the softest,
Loves the most quietly.

So I wait,
Patient as bark,
Hoping one day
They will remember
How to be still,
How to breathe,
How to be.
Like me,
A Tree.