TREES DON'T JUST STAND THERE

The sun tries hard but barely pierces the canopy sending laser beams to the ground
leaving a place of shadows, hidden meaning, unrevealed secrets with life all around.
Ageless, infinite, not a scary forest, a metaphor for sin as Dante wrote.
Rather, as in the Athshean language, the word for world is forest - humans take note.

It was presented to us as if by chance, we would enter almost as a tourist.
Stockade like trees parted, an entrance was revealed and dark behind it rose the forest.

The noises we had heard silenced, we were looked on as outsiders, maybe intruders,
trespassers who hadn't asked permission of the trees, some dating back to the Tudors.

Eyes were peering at us out of curiosity and fear, the birds had stopped their song,
the wind held its breath, nature has no patience with hubris nor those who are never wrong.

It felt like we had been allowed access to this special place to learn, to understand
the forest as a community of living entities stretching into the land.

These are sentient beings: trees, animals, insects perceive, relate, communicate.
A network to sustain, heal and feed, one which the Mother Tree helps to coordinate.

A web of fungi connects the roots of trees extracting nutrients, warning of threats.
We are at the mercy of nature's rhythms and cycles, something man quickly forgets.

We stand a part of nature. To wage war against it is to wage war against ourselves.
But the consequences we hide away for decades on some metaphorical shelves.

Still Cop teeters like a down and out towards the precipice, words now superfluous.
We need action, humility. It's not how we might save trees but how trees can save us.