The war of the environment
is evident in these hardened harsher climes,
where cramped and clinging trees are found encamped on hardy ground,
pressed into the earth, disparate in the decay, messed in disarray
like unshaven whiskers on the jowls of the soil.

Jostled amid the elements
by swinging storms, wring wringing wind and rampaged by rain
weaving swathes of stubble with the blunted razor of water raging
through the terrain to leave a maze of lustre and bluster behind.

The fittest are the freshest,
regeneration surging separately,
with the desire to merge together in a strangled survival,
an acknowledgement that hope belongs alongside the damage and the despair.

An inland stream awash:
a constant seam across a spartan scene of green;
a width of water flushing life along its length.
Even in death the tree is not crushed, is not bereft,
not a tragedy, but testimony to an inner strength.
Defiantly retaining its place, though deprived,
the trunk still proudly stands its ground
with the grace gained while alive.