Each old-growth branch is today’s thirty-year harvest.

The pine stands tall with thick bark—old water over spine.

Each handgrip—a challenge to be braver than your friend.

An upside-down world of high death as a home for sight.

Sound is stored for tomorrow’s answers, and the mist gives

one last memory of thick forest floors,

as a brief-lived child of the world

headed to a sandy age on ocean floors before

scorched to space together as the end of time.