Image Credit & Copyright: MaryBeth Kiczenski

Devil’s Tower —

all those trees are
looking toward it,
slowly making their way forward en masse

assaying to assault it’s
columnar ramparts
and join the combatants
already fixed and feeding on its flanks.

See them, brave and mighty pines,
clinging to the side to crack and toss their
bit of slab away into the rubble heap,
risking their own fatal plunge.

But all in service to the cause:
that stubborn, arrogant pillar must fall!

And they are winning.
Though its mighty finger still points upward
toward the wheeling stars and galaxies
and while it may remain for long time set,
a monolith to earth’s furthest reach,
the trees will one day win.

The green will always consume the gray,
until the last fires come down
from that far flaming sky in response
to the pleas of the planet’s bones
almost stifled ‘midst the war cries of the forest.

-Kevin Trammel
April 15, 2022