When the Oak Tree Wept

I. The Fall

The oak stood tall, a sentinel of years,

its bark etched deep with seasons’ whispered sighs,

until the storm arrived with iron shears

and split its heart beneath indifferent skies.

No crash resounded—just a breathless groan,

a creak of bones that cradled every nest,

as roots, like veins, released their grip on stone

and left the earth to swallow what was left.

II. The Hollow

The hollow where its shadow once had lain

now cradles ghosts of acorns, cracked and dry.

The squirrels pause, as though to ask in vain:

Who holds the sun? Who braids the branches high?

The wind composes dirges through the leaves

of younger trees that shiver, thin and spare.

They bend like mourners, clutching at their sleeves,

while crows etch hymns in columns of the air.

III. The Sap

The sap still bleeds in golden, sticky trails—

a language older than the soil’s first name.

It spells the stories of the owl’s night wails,

the dawns that dripped with dew and dappled flame.

And in the rings, a labyrinth of time,

the weight of centuries now softly rots.

But deep below, where darkness dares to climb,

the roots still dream in chlorophyll and knots.

IV. The Sapling

A sapling cracks the grave where old wood lies,

its tender leaves unfurling like a prayer.

It drinks the tears the storm left in its eyes

and wears the sunlit crown the oak once shared.

For elegies are seeds in borrowed ground,

and grief, the soil where new beginnings rise.

The tree is gone—but in its echo, sound

the countless lives it fed with silent cries.