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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