The Tree Poem by John Lars Zwerenz

THE TREE
One lone tree in the corner of the graveyard
Seemed in the deep, pale, solemn night
Not to share in nature's natural light.
Its bark was dark, forbidding and hard.
Its barren boughs wavered in the wind which grieves.
Silently, thick, morose and dour,
The arrival of the witches' hour
Lived like ghosts in its dreaded, dead leaves.
And then without warning,
It swallowed me whole,
Into its base of rotten wood.
And as the clouded day was dawning
With hatred it stole
Every fragment of my soul
As much as its clutching branches could.