The Trees, Our Companions Poem by Daniel Brick

I
The trees stand upright
like us, standing is our common
posture, and their branches
like our arms stretch out,
penetrating the middle air
or more obscurely, stretch up,
as we do when we invoke a power
beyond our own... And rootedness
which is their metier gives us
another metaphor, or is it
an aspiration? To feel so completely
at home in a particular place,
to find our feelings echoed by
the space we claim as ours.
Of course, they make no claims,
not on us, for sure, but also not on
Mother Earth. Isn't the interplay
of roots and dirt a beautiful thing
to contemplate? It is the moving
downward to chthonic depths,
with roots knitting a unity
of depth and surface
we witness and applaud.

II
From my balcony I see
two trees and metaphors
multiply. They are sentinels
of the yard, they are priests
blessing the small animals
which scurry over and around
them. They are pillars of a vast
open temple which upholds the sky
it worships. They are soldiers
at attention committed to protecting
this garden space. They are friends
of my heart and their conversation,
so sweet when breezes fan their leaves,
becomes profound in the night air
and quiets whatever remains of day.