Sequoia Poem by Chas Weeden

Ineffable -
Still I write these lines
trite.
A scaffold of words
which whence removed
casts only a silence
of long shadows.
To you, the paradigm
of living time,
I write ephemeral
wordless words.

You say nothing
though the wind wafts
words which speak
beyond words to each.
The sound of wind
continues in the stillness
and reaches into
the logos which
spells the visitors
deeper than these.

You speak centuries -
the entire time
of our adolescence -
when you've watched
as we wrestle with
the worst of nature.
You were made for fire
and your cambium grows
thick bark and fibers
over the scars.

Does too our tissue
grow over scars?
Wars, devastations?
Will these as well clear
the understory?
But you don't create fire
you endure it.
Is that the difference?
This is your nature,
share and compare us ours.

We see your exposed rings
and the markers
telling us which ring
belongs to Christ
and the Inquisition.
I see my ring
but not the current
as only the living
scribe those rings
and they are being written.

Poetry overcomes time
and endows the ephemeral
with permanence.
Your permanence
is presence and in
this silence of time
the visitors sense
then understand -
they've come not to see you
but themselves.