The Saplings

Small trees are never taken by the wind; only the large, whose boughs have far outpaced their roots. The little trees bend to nature, while their elders keel over, and so I have never walked in the woods after a windstorm to find all the trees still standing. The persistence of those yet upright is measured not by the girth, but by the limberness of their trunks.


The Saplings

The wind is like a lioness;
she furrows in the wheat
and makes the supple saplings press
their temples in defeat,
to curtsey for the watercress,
their lofty spires ever less
than lesser in retreat.

But even they are unconcerned
as every aged bole
is overthrown and underchurned
to bare a ragged hole,
all roots and radicles upturned.
This sufferance is only earned
by yielding control.