what makes me most alive

we are not so different

you and I

at birth

I suckled on the earth’s sweet breast

slept to bedtime stories passed from root to root

I’ve played in winter’s snow

and danced in spring’s showers

spent hours on romantic summer nights

spilling secrets to the wind and the grass and the flowers

maybe what makes me most alive is that

I’ve lost and I grieve

for land stripped by hunger and greed

a deafness that bereaves

these next decades that I will live

gathering footsteps across my shade

watching wanderers pass each day

I wonder who will stop and listen

to all the things

the trees have to say

Anonymous