The Tree

The Tree

Forgotten midst a foggy chill
and faintly etched in dreary sky,
there stands a tree in oaken skin —
its weathered branches, nearly bare.

Each season, since its life began,
the tree strives to enlighten man.

It seeks attention in each spring
when sun-warmed buds explode to green.
Then soon the tree grows leafy arms
and cautiously it touches man.

But man, in haste, eyes on the ground,
is blind to nature all around.

The tree calls out, but goes unheard.
Its voice, so soft, on silence floats —
like leaves in fall, that burst blood red
and gently drop like wistful words.

Man hears not what the tree has said
through storms that roar inside his head.

As winter winds now numb the land
and silver sadness frosts the tree,
a gray sky wraps its tangled limbs
in downy blankets, soft and white.

The man looks up — beyond the tree,
and curses what he still can't see.

The tree just longs to comfort man,
and hold his burdens for a while —
to breathe in him the peace within
and still his clouded, restless mind.

If only man would look around,
a healing nature can be found.




30 lines



(Note: The Revanche poetry form, invented by David Hirt, combines blank verse and rhyming verse, using iambic meter. Each quatrain is blank verse — non-rhyming, followed by a couplet — with end rhymes. )