It took years to find its connection.

Growth and support waxed and waned,

its existence controlled.

 

This tree seeks the sun,

yet high-rise buildings ration a meagre supply —

enough to survive,

not enough to thrive.

 

Even at night it is bathed in light:

street lamps,

office towers.

City buses and trucks —

transporting products far more valuable than this lonely tree —

must not be inconvenienced,

so council workers prune,

cutting branches,

limiting reach.

 

It stands as a symbolic gesture in this progressive civilisation,

a relic of a time long past —

only missing its glass enclosure and exhibit label,

declaring genus and specific epithet.

 

We humans “know,”

we study,

we categorise.

We are superior.

 

But we do not do.

We are not are.

 

If perhaps we sit,

listen,

watch,

feel,

connect —

will we recognise this lonely tree

as a life giver?

A teacher?

 

Its roots nourish the foundations of the earth

from which both humans and plants emerge.

Yet to anchor our own identity,

our beliefs,

our importance,

we extract the essence of the tree,

mapping our own existence

through a family tree —

a symbolic metaphor to understand ourselves.

 

We abuse this wisdom,

failing to see that the tree,

and Country,

is as important —

if not more —

than we,

     than me.