Felling A Mighty Oak

 

A seedling emerges from the ashen soil,

The only color on the ground,

It is small, yet it is growing,

As the only life around.

It passes through childhood,

It goes up and up and up,

It whizzes past it's youth,

And it becomes a grown-up.

Standing tall and strong,

A mighty, glorious oak,

A hardwood in a land,

Of ash and dust and smoke.

It reaches far toward heaven,

Always falling short,

It still grows bigger, though,

A giant free support.

And when the autumn comes,

It's leaves it does drop,

The acorns fall to the earth,

Sowing next years' crop.

And as the young ones grow much older,

They begin to crowd,

The mighty oak who sowed their seeds,

Who watered and weeded and plowed.

But the farmer comes out with axe in hand,

He begins to chip away,

The lifeblood of that oak tree,

The stump it will decay.

He chops and chops and wipes his brow,

The tree does not waver,

He kicks and swears and tries so much harder,

The tree is the braver.

But finally, after much hard work,

He hears a crackle then a crash,

The mighty tree is felled,

And with it the branches smash,

The ground underneath it,

With a thundering roar,

Of its last breath;

It shall be no more.

It took long, hard work,

For that farmer to chop,

At the strong trunk of that tree,

For it to drop.

It had grown mighty and brave,

Soaring above the pines,

But its time had come,

To join its other kinds,

Of the ground and earth,

From which it came,

And where it will rest,

For the next timeframe.

 

But those little acorn seeds,

That it so numerously dropped,

Will become as strong, if not more,

Where they will sing and soar.

For felling one tree can kill it,

It will die and it will decay,

It will sink into the earth,

And forever fade away.

But the little seeds it dropped,

Will grow and multiply,

They will overpower the farmer's axe,

Before they will even die.