Today the trees told me
That when their branches creak above me
It means they’re listening
And if I hear them whispering
They’re talking about me.
Today the trees told me
All the things they overhear
When we’re near enough
And our minds are loud
Every thought we think is clear.
The trees talked and listened to me today
“I’m stuck” they said they hear us say.
“Stuck in one place
Endlessly hovering over the circle
A loop of life I mindlessly trace
The earth grabbed my heel
Swallowed me into an in between space
I’m doomed to die stuck
Smothered in its embrace”
But no one is more stuck than the trees.
They uttered truths unearthed
From beneath the peeling of their trunks
They said
“My roots burrow deeper into this earth
Than you’ll ever know.
I rupture footpaths, I’ll always outgrow
Anything man builds on top of me,
I’m buried so strong.
It takes an army of men
Piled high like building blocks
To cut me down.
They tackle me piece by piece
Saw through me until I topple
Thumping down
I shake the ground.
It takes many a machine
To pry me away from the soils
That feed me
That keep me sane.
This dirt owns me
And I own what surrounds me
I may not have blood filled veins like you
But if I did they’d be rushing rivers
Of the earth that created me.
The earth I’m supposedly ‘stuck’ in.
But I am here because I want to be
My leaves are green because they want to be
The sky is blue because it wants to be.
If you feel stuck
And you don’t want to be
Change it.
It’s easy.
It’s easy to be anything
If it’s what you want to be.
If you’re happy in the skin of you
Like I’m happy in the skin of me.
Thank the world for gifts it’s given you,
You’re not as stuck as it may seem.
Nothing could ever be more stuck than me
Yet I am happy
For I can grow up
I grow out
My branches reach and
My leaves kiss the clouds,
I grow so tall I can see it all
Only from one place, but I recall
Nothing else can see the world
The way I do.
You can see the world from anywhere,
See anything,
You have no barriers, no walls.
But you little humans
You’re always wanting more.
You want to climb trees
You want to stand tall
But you wouldn’t want to be me.
You feel stuck already
Even though you’re blessed with the feet
That carry you wherever you wish to go.
Oh, honey, you’re not stuck at all.”
Lauren Kathleen 