Poetry: Trees

by Tommy Hayfield

(My family tree)

My secret agent decided to kill me and he was good at that he would be happy to say.

Today he was assigned (by creative design) to find my path through the fog of many paths, many woods.

Two roads diverged to one and then to none in a colorful wood.

There my secret-agent-to-be stood amid the grandeur of autumn

(could he feel the presence of dreams in this brushy valley hollowed out by a trickling sometime puddling stream)?

The kid: the new growth forest with many juvenile trees

led me to think there was enthusiasm to be had...

the spindling trees catered to the wind and bent passing the wind to an heir:

a brother or a sister. A game it was as the trees like a team or a family

played their wind and spoke a change by their baffling twigs and leaves:

a tree imparts a voice in a simple way like this. The family trees stood strong,

together and strong for me I'd soon know. They, as a family would catch me,

as I fell later that warm Winter night.

A deciduous Silver Maple put out her strong arm and caught

or tried and slowed me, she saved me, the family of trees saved me that night.

The whispering wind heard a whisper and passed it on and I minutely turned

and as I fell her strong arm caught or tried to and slowed me, saved me.

If you must fall fall here the now injured tree mutely,

silently looked down and spoke upon me.

I lay unconscious but lucky under her helping arm.

I lay unconscious in silence but still breathing. I live.

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