The stump sobs for its pinecone babies unborn,
Seeds in their prisons a blasphemous broken promise.
Each ring on the tabled trunk now a year of defeat,
Spring frozen by death and circumstance.
Beneath the sawdust of nature’s hopes
The sap congeals, anger in amber.
The wound blots out proud heights and soaring sky
Leaving only choking tumor of pine.
To remove the stump? — an ox, countless winters,
Or the lightning strike. A mountain cannot
Know when the petrified heart will empty.
The nearby seedlings shudder;
The bitterest roots linger longest.