The Last Tree On The Hill Poem by linus gerald

It stood alone
long before loneliness had a name—
roots braided deep
into the memory of rain,
branches lifted
like open hands to the sun.

Children once circled its trunk,
laughing in its shade.
Goats rested beneath its patience.
Birds stitched their small hopes
between its fingers of green.

It was not only a tree.
It was a well of coolness
in a season of heat.
A keeper of soil.
A quiet maker of clouds.

But the summers grew longer.
The river thinned to a rumor.
Fields cracked like broken clay bowls.
The wind arrived hot and restless,
carrying dust instead of dew.

The villagers looked at the sky
and found no mercy there.
They looked at their empty granaries,
at cooking fires with nothing to hold,
at children whose hunger
had become louder than birdsong.

And so they came with axes.

The tree did not run.
It had always given—
shade without price,
fruit without question,
air without measure.

Each strike echoed
across the hill,
a dull confession
of desperation.

When it fell,
the earth shuddered—
not in anger,
but in grief.

For with it fell
a piece of rain not yet formed,
a fistful of soil not yet carried away,
a thousand breaths not yet taken.

The sun wasted no time.
It pressed harder against the land.
Without roots to hold it,
the ground loosened its grip.
When rain finally came,
it rushed wild and unforgiving—
flood where there had been drought,
loss where there had been hope.

The villagers stood
in the open heat,
wondering why the wind
felt harsher now,
why the crops failed faster,
why the well tasted of dust.

They did not see
that the tree had been
a bridge between sky and soil—
a quiet negotiator
with the climate's temper.

Climate change is not a distant storm.
It is the slow unweaving
of balance.
It is heat that lingers too long,
rain that forgets its rhythm,
land that forgets how to forgive.

And sometimes,
it is a lonely tree
cut down
to survive today,
while tomorrow
slips quietly
out of reach.

But somewhere beneath the stump,
a stubborn root still clings.
If tended,
if given the mercy
once taken for granted,
it may yet rise again—

a reminder
that healing begins
when we learn
to protect
what protects us.