The wise tree puts down roots.—C.L. Alderbranch 
 
It's hardly news that moving over time gets harder 
for Terra Firma's lightfoot sons and daughters, 
as the terra grows less firma to the tread. 
The flaw and wonder of our sturdy gears—
ankles, knees, and all—  is that 
they do it all so well, until they fail. 
And then it costs us dear to dance or pray. 
Among the snips of irony: 
the more we know, the faster it all seems to fly away. 

Also worth a mention as we sidle down: 
time’s open mystery, into which 
we shed our lives behind us as we go,  
like snake skins writhing 
in the paperiness of pantomime. 

(Is it so strange we love to watch leaves 
dance in breeze, curling in sweet air's river?)

Trees show us time can also heal, 
and keep some precious things alive, 
such as deep love, and laughter.  
Underneath the cambium 
the future sheathes —
cool and juicy, cell by budding cell. 
 
Video will let you watch a bear cub 
shinny up a pine toward growing-tips, 
headed for where heaven takes the wheel 
from imperious gravity 
and its shuttling of vital fluids 
below the weathered skin that soothes it. 

There’s more there 
than the usual liquid mysteries, 
phloem and xylem, blood and mucus, 
flowing essence dancing with the focus 
of time's pulsing grasp. 

It's never merely pain
that makes the living gasp.