On The Tree That Was Cut Down Poem by Rhys Owens

The tree that shaded the window at night,
Between the shaking light that told me whether the aliens were coming,
As sometimes I lay on my cot, or stand by the heater;
They cut you down. They cut you down, and took you as wood
Somewhere else. Why? Because your leaves were falling on someone's truck.

I'm not a tree-lover, but I loved you. Just as I love
The forests in my town, and the other trees in my yard.
Forests everywhere prove that I am right, and they are wrong.
They that don't know what trees are about.
Those that forgot what people are, too.

But your roots are alive. And I will wait for you.
Like I say to the people here, if I leave I'll come back
More and more, and stay and stay.

There's truth that there's a reaper in the field, only at night
And only if you don't look; a real kind of ghost
That would appear to do more than what a ghost does
If you were allowed to see it when you look,
How it appeared. But I'm not afraid of it.

I'm too tired to be afraid tonight, my lonely friend, divorced
Of yourselves. But tomorrow I'll promise and be afraid, for
They'll chop me down, just as dead as I can't see you anymore,
And that makes me sad, oh that makes me sad.

But who cares about being sad: I guess they don't.
Don't realize what you were about, never a question
That I'd feel about you, but I feel.
And you do, too; all alone without you anymore.
You without yourself, still there enough to know.