Our Human Mistakes - Trout Black

[Larry Robinson]

Our Human Mistakes
                   ……..and Trees


So many poems

So many words

So much talk

About Death, and Trees.

Crazed hands on nuclear triggers.
Trying to imagine the unimaginable:
"All of this gone?"
What does this actually mean?
Family? Friends? Birds? Trees? Dogs?
Gone? 

Our weather. 
"Our" because we changed it.
"Our" because it's changing us.
Indefensible shorelines, 
heat, 
floods, 
hurricanes and tornados,
drought.
Everywhere.

And here in our Un-United States,
horrific deaths by guns.
The unimaginable become commonplace:
Oh, look, another mass shooting of children.

Our death of democracy.
Media distortions, 
petroleum profits.
"Let's do this together" gone.
Truth more and more unavailable,
as we forget how to listen.

Yet in the midst of all of these deaths
we speak and hear 
more
every day
about trees.

Trees speak slowly, 
quietly.

Trees
have been here
a whole lot longer
than we have.

Never pointing at themselves.
Just standing there,
growing slowly.

Roots pull gifts from soil
up strong, quiet trunks.

Limbs offer footrests
and nest homes
for birds.

Buds open,
leaves 
stretch 
their incredible beauty.

All summer 
they gather sunlight.

Autumn leaves 
fall
into our palms.

Is it because trees are so quiet
that we poem talk write of them,
in the midst of all these painful deaths?

Is it because they never 
point towards themselves?

Is it because their roots,
about whom we continue to learn so much,
silently hidden underground,
reach for other roots,
and quietly take care of each other?

Is it because these roots 
have so much to teach us?

This poem sings herself
captured by trees' gifts

by their beauty

by their hidden wonders

by their slow silence

by what
when we truly listen
they have to teach us.

	- Trout Black