Just off the forest path

A hardwood tree

Cut and felled

By someone like me.

Turned into a stump

Softens and rots —

What once was

Now is not.

Cracked open by a seed

Determined to dig its way

Into what is left

A seedling breaks out

From the old stump top

Climbing up the light shaft

Blinking in the sun patch

Freed by the fallen.

We see what it is like

All too true it seems

Feeding off the forest floor

Our parents’ dying dreams.

Crying as we pass by

“Look at my life, my show!”

Too busy living ever to know

The joy we owe.