It's Still Life

Sentinel Trees

These are
her sentinel trees,
watchers
of her comings
and her goings

This first Sunday
of the month,
frost holding
the air low
and steady
as she leans
back
into the white breath of a birch.

She, once a child
of its slow-growing seed,
whispers,
tell me a story…
one about a young woman
who ran away
to the city
because she thought
green
wasn’t enough.

And tell me
she knows now
how her instincts
move only
in shades of green

that she is rooted
in pungent petrichor,
that she is the moss
threading the forest’s pulse,
that she is lichen
quietly translating
light into time,

and that she wants
to remain here,
in a place
where longstanding truth
rules by longevity
rather than noise.

Tell me a story,
she said,
How the sentinels
waited
for her return.

And the air
caught her every breath,
her every word,
lifting them
into thin winter,

until they loosened
from themselves
and became
clouds
disappearing
into sky.