the trees cast their gaze away
from the rot of a ******,
the inexplicable slaughter of a sapling,
its singular leaf blackened and
fetally curled.

they cry, "we could not move,
we could do nothing," and nothing
they did worked because they did
nothing.

innocence now only remembered
in the pungent stench of death,
an infant body but charcoal in the ground.

they wail, "for there was no rain,
for there was no sun, we have yet again been forsaken!", trembling in harsh winds
that carry the ashes of their children.

they strip themselves, for it seemed wiser
to clothe the dead than the living, and so
a singular broken stem lay beneath a swathe of fading foliage, brown and red
enveloping an all too conspicuous black.

even as the fire ravages their naked bark,
even if the forest goes up in flames,
even though they have been forsaken,
they will at least die in the embrace
of a world that once loved them.