When The Rivers Began To Blame The Trees Poem by linus gerald

The rivers are crying for water.

Listen—
not the rush against stone,
not the silver laughter over pebbles—
but a cracked whisper
dragging itself through a bed of dust.

They look to the hills,
to the stumps like broken teeth,
and they accuse the silence.

Why did you let yourselves be taken?
they murmur to the absent forests.
Why did you fall so easily
to the teeth of men?

The trees do not answer—
their tongues are rings of memory
stacked in forgotten yards,
their limbs now doors and desks
and the ribs of houses.

The rivers shrink further.

They remember when roots
braided their banks like steady hands,
when leaves stitched shade across their shoulders,
when rain arrived
and did not flee.

But now the rain comes startled—
hard, sudden, unforgiving—
and finds no arms to hold it.
It runs wild,
claws at naked earth,
then vanishes.

The rivers call this betrayal.

They do not yet understand
that trees do not choose the blade,
that bark is not armor against hunger,
that falling is not consent.

The blame drifts like ash
over a valley of ghosts.

And the wind,
who has seen the axes lifted,
who has carried the smoke of burning crowns,
whispers what the rivers cannot bear:

It was never the trees
who let go.

It was we
who loosened the soil from their feet,
who traded canopies for quick profit,
who mistook ancient breath
for timber.

Now the rivers cry for water
that once began in leaves.

They carve their grief into stone,
grow narrow with remembering,
and wait for a forest
brave enough to return.

Plant one tree,
and a river clears its throat.

Plant a forest,
and the rivers may forgive us.