You have given me the tree entire,
not symbol but sinew, not metaphor
but marrow, the way drought writes
its story in wood, the way stillness
is not peace but preparation
for the letting go of limbs.

I feel the land refuse to grieve,
beneath that scorching reality of light,
with cicada shells and beetle-want,
decay composing its own future,
life nesting in the beautiful ruin.

You stood there and refused to look away
from what the Territory does to wood and time,
and I as reader cannot un-see or un-feel
the ontology of fracture:
how a tree
becomes a body,
becomes a history,
becomes a poem,
that knows when to shed.

 

26/2/2026