Bristlecone Longevity
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
Photo: lightrainproductions.com/BristleconePine.
The beauty of the tree is not how old,
Indeed how ancient in its gnarling now,
Not in its silent history yet untold,
Nor in the pre-historic roots and bough—
Their age— but in its newness ever new,
Its torqued refusal to be caught by death,
Rejection of defeat enclasped in screw-
Shaped trunk, five-thousand-year eon’s breath
There in its arid air, determined bark,
Those needles prickly and the feisty cones
Which stand against, aghast, against the stark
Realities which beat against its bones,
..These needles and these cones forever young,
….Which sing forever like a new-made tongue.