another poem

**What I've learned from Trees**


If a tree falls and finds a spark to ignite its potential
It is only carbon combusting
Yet more, finding freedom apart from life
reuniting with chaos
Until God speaks order again
and the cycle repeats
the universal redundancy

Smaller the perspective of leaves
Who need no ignition to burn slowly
like the underbrush of Washington's forest
where Autumn changes essences
to refract light differently

Shades of fire
underneath canopies of clouds
here even rain cannot extinguish the flames

I want to run into it
I want to be consumed
for I too am carbon combusting slowly
Yet for me life remains as God continues to speak order
even as I evolve through new shades of character

Even here as colder, bitter, lonely seasons
strip me of hopes
with faith forgotten
Yet love lies dormant until the glory of God's presence
will reside long enough to put on foliage again

So much is lost as summer fades
For all that grew beside me were flowers . . and one
beautiful
And I'm striving at gratitude, but I asked God for a tree
yet I rarely see such permanence
and I'm waiting with fragile hope that, for whatever reason
the coming season will be different
actually
beyond illusions

Yet for now I shed the hopes and plans of summer
all now revealing their colour and character
each a page of poetic thoughts
falling to decay
nourishing the possibilities of Spring
And briefly now as new potential waits in dormancy
This time of cold awaiting the New
listening as footsteps on Winter's floor
Loud with crushing sadness
Remind me of life
which, is never mere resuscitation,
but more costly and of highest worth
Always the redemption of yesterday