watch the sunrise
from forty flaps of birdflight
still not high enough to touch
the swaying canopy.

Proud as you are, growing
upon that peeling pine
your only freedom is the wind
that lifts your leaves.
Momentarily, they are wings.

I may never understand
your ambivalence,
suffering the rain
catching the biting dew.
Why allow the elements
to bend your fronds
when your trusted bough
can’t ever shelter you?

I can only grieve for the day
that death finds your tree.

—Anne Carly Abad