|Weekly Feature – Speak as the Tree |
The Last Redwood
by Greg Bell

 

When the two-trunks came (this, my elders told to me)
they seemed of no account to us, but ants that crawled
beneath our reachings out, and jagged in their movings

but they would break our silences and startle us
into heeding of their ways     and so my giant elders
slowly turned attention to their crowings

and wondered much

Long-born are we, lasting many cycles of the seasons
in reaching out and reaching up afar to winds
that carry salt sea air to wrap us in the comfort

of their embracings, and so throughout the countless
countings of the cycles, giant elders captured sky
that rained upon the little youngers such as I

and gave us water

But then many two-trunks came again
and crowed again with lightning in their hands, cutting
first the elders reaching far into the windy blue

then my guardians that gave me shade and life
then my smaller kin     At last they came to me.
They stood, and stood, and made the sounds of crows

they called laughter

Now I stand alone     No whispers through the wind
of far-flung family     of sheltering guardians     of any
of my kin     no shelter from the sun that beats down

heats me beyond enduring     I feel the current
in my roots from many kin from many ways away
but it grows dim     as mine grows dim     So hot

so     dry          so…

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Photo by James Fitzgerald on Unsplash

Greg Bell has written poetry all his life as a necessity. He’s 2020 recipient of the Kowit Poetry Prize. He’s author of poetry collection Looking for Will: My Bardic Quest with Shakespeare (Ion Drive Publishing, 2015) and two award-winning plays, Alms for Oblivion & Polestar.  He now facilitates the Green Poets Workshop at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, CA. Says he “We are the witnesses, the Jiminy Crickets, the agents of change, and we have a deal of work to do!”