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The Fifth September Song (a hunger poem)

THE THINNEST OF BRANCHES

All the thinnest branches hovering near the ground, bodies in the bending oak like hungry children, each one different, curved, rigid, scowling... alone. Some seem strong, some frail, yet refusing to quit, like those thin shards of beam after the bombs, standing tall, defiant, unwilling to greet their end, refusing to fall, swaying with the selfish wind.

Come winter, the branches will feel the weight of ice. They will try their best not to fall upon the next and tumble headlong into the heap of frozen ground. Winters are a tree’s perpetual war with nature, with itself, its branches; disagreeable warriors and obstinate victims, shattering ferociously in a shrieking plunge to earth’s pitiless mausoleum.

© 2009 mrp/thepoetryman
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