The Last Great Pine

I breathe through you.
One-million-minute green lungs
Puffing out life like the smallest
Industry of some microcosm.
A universe of life – within –
Within the universe of all life.
 
Witness to the rogue
And councillor to Bruce.
For seven hundred years
You have stood guard on that hill.
Overlooking our growth
As you stretched towards the heavens.
 
I wish that legend was true.
I see you in my sleep.
Stripping the earth bare,
Avalanching stone with soil
As you uproot and patrol
The gardens of your hillside.
 
Then as dawn settles upon your needle,
You go back to garrison
And the world awakes.
The engines bellow never dream.
They perform their practice
And tear down Rowan, Oak and Birch.
 
You must go now, fly
To some new seedling and start again.
You know their kind.
You have seen them change,
They are not like those men
That you knew in infancy.
 
I will visit you.
I will lay flesh to bark,
Do not cry.
Your sacred sap is above
Our tears.
Please, go.
 
The thought of some callous whim
Splitting your bows
Banishes prayer for man.
There are birds,
There are many more.
There are so many more living with you.
 
You are the last of the ancient.
The hill and her stone will miss
You dearly. And from my window
I will not see your peak.
But in my dreams, I will hear your limbs
Rustle in the breeze.
  
If you die; death dies.
There will be nothing left on land.
Your birds will no longer kiss
The sky with angelic wing.
And the fish will live forever
In the angriest blue of tempered seas.

Save them.
Save yourself.
Save me.