The Life of A Tree

My thoughts are scattered

Like the paper on the floor,

Crumbled and half finished,

A beautiful tree no more.

Does a tree know who it will be?

When its bark is ripped from its body,

Wounds bared with no mercy,

Bleeding freely for everyone to see.

Does it accept its fate?

To be written on by everyone else,

To be torn and shredded and twisted,

A blank canvas for someone else’s story. 

Does it want to create its own? 

Does it know how? 

Perhaps its roots are connecting to others like itself.

Buried deep beneath the ground;

Whispering its dreams and ambitions,

Silently begging to rip up its own roots and come to the surface.

To finally feel the grass,

To feel the breeze,

To burn away the need to please.

To show up as it is 

Not deconstructed and morphed into something it doesn’t recognise.

It was never meant to be paper.

It was never meant to lay shredded up on someone’s desk,

Its purpose reduced to a stranger's unfinished thoughts.

It was a tree!

Wasn’t that enough? 

Isn’t that enough? 

The doubt creeps back in, 

Its roots return to the earth;

Maybe it wasn’t enough.

It shrivels back up, 

Returns to being the scrunched up paper on the floor,

The dreams it once had,

Return to nothing more;

Than an unfinished note

On the desk.