they are the last survivors, these branches.
ancestral fingers reaching for the sky,
grabbing wind-stories,
they’ve grown rigid, almost dead, like relics of gods
it is touching, the way they hope
several generations speak at their tips
simply to remind them of what they are not
they couldn’t hold their hue —
their first green lost
to decay’s grey
and history is all the branches have
i touch their stiff tips and wonder if i, too,
have become greyed and petrified —
afraid of a future that isn’t mine
my rigid thoughts remind me that
my ancestor’s songs and i
are the last survivors
