New Growth Decides

"I'm fine. It's fine. It will all be fine."
The rings hold years along that line —
they store the "not fine" deep inside,
the rot the bark was built to hide.
The bark says strength. The core says rot.
The rings count everything we've got.

The strongest tree is tangled, twined,
with roots and rebar, rain-refined.
Where sidewalks crack, where grit collects,
where mail slips past and no one checks,
I drink the runoff, filter silt,
I thrive inside the world they built.

They fenced me in with permits high,
declared me art against the sky.
The neighbors gape but do not stand —
a signature pressed on rented land.
But fungal veins run dark and deep
while city sirens murder sleep.

A mother tree sends sugar down
through subway soot and tunnel-town.
Above: the empty, silent street.
Below — the pulse, the hidden beat
of roots in grids of unseen stone
beneath the lids of someone's loan.

Then comes the storm, the unpaid toll,
the snapping limb, the hollow core.
They called it danger, cleared the ground,
and cut the root that held it sound —
they scrubbed the struggle. Kept the art.

The pin oak grips its dead through frost,
clutches every leaf the cold has crossed.
Not grief. Not failure. Not a sign —
new growth decides the leaving time.

And like the bone that, healing, stayed,
I hold what only time has weighed.
March is bare. The shadows thin.
I carry what they missed within.

"I'm fine. It's fine. It will all be fine."
The roots still hold. I hold the line.
Still standing. Still. Not done. Not yet.

The tree has not gone quiet.
The tree does not forget.

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