Tree tops, tree tops,
Air swinging back.
Driving, driving,
Until water pops.

Fallen and dying trees,
who lived to help.
Wood that stands
With sticks as hands.

Hands that stay still,
As you go downhill.
The world follows
This oblivious drill.

Yet you drive and drive
Until water you find.

You’re an evergreen.
You don’t take to survive;
You’re a shelter for life.
If you drive and drive,
I know water you’ll find.

If you can still breathe,
It can still happen.
If you can still move,
Keep your pencil sharpened.

If you can see the dark
If you can feel the cold,
It means you still have a heart.
Just— your story’s untold.

Let your wings unfold.

Im not being rhetorical,
Or sarcastic, or philosophical,
Or any fancy, poetic way.
I’m just saying, there’s always a way.

On our way into
Santa Anita one day,
an old man had tipped
over in his wheelchair.
There was a pool of blood
beneath his smooth head.
I was with my Dad.
He was around the same
age as the poor injured man.
I was 12.

Seeing that man, and watching
the blank stares of the apathetic
crowd gathering around the
man, and the blood, and the
fallen wheelchair, I knew that
nobody would win, and the
horses that ran were the luckiest
of us all.