---

Note: This poem about trees is heart-felt and sappy (pun intended). I like it.

I’ve read that creation sings in a minor key.

Trees are living vessels too.
You look at them,
and they look back at you.
Yet rarely do trees bend to say
a kind “How do you do?”

Trees live to serve—aloof from use
as living drinking-gourds,
trees keep syrups sweet for human treats,
grow timber, planks and boards,
give costly resins, treasured oils,
and root-down deep to hold our soils.

Trees arch high—to shelter and to shade,
and always give with beauty,
from saplings through decay and age.

Our trees maintain
the goodness of each breath we breathe.

Once trees held reign in wild and woody worlds
where foresters became friends.
Then rude men came to grasp and grab;
in greed and need men raped
what trees once lived to gladly give.

Soundless, uncomplaining,
trees bow to yield to pain.
submit to plow, to ax,
to slaps and saws and careless flames,
to drought and herbicidal death and chains.

Our once majestic trees
strain now before the force of change.
Is it vain to hope and pray
that forests, woods and groves
that still remain
will grow to know
that man’s destructive plans
are blinded and short ranged?

As long as seeds are pre-ordained
to root to be a like-kind tree,
as long as branches bud,
and leaves contain
(like you and me)
threads of sunshine, soil and rain
(not to mention stardust)
our trees will stay to serve with us.

God will defend His earth.
This earth He made and loves.
It is ordained. His Son shall save!
and re-creation will rejoice
and raise its voice in praise.

© Ginny Emery

For we know that the whole creation groans
and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
Romans 8:22 NASB 

• Faith in Art
• Trees