Last evening on my walk
I finally said “I love you”
to the trees.

It was inescapable,
those green arms so open
for any of us to walk
into their embrace night or day,
never rejecting even the loneliest soul.

And how watchful they are,
these neighborhood sentinels
so quiet and patient,
never calling attention to themselves,
anchored and anchoring,
role models who do not harm a gnat
and yet stand tall and strong,

ladders to the heaven in our hearts
which we climb at a glance,
or else spreading wide and round
like a great draped rustling quilt,

home to singers
and invisibly taking in 
un-breathable gas,
showering us in return
with oxygen’s new life.

In their limbs
the breezes whisper secrets
we overhear just enough
to remind us the Ocean is very near,
even though we can’t see it.

They serve so silently.
I have felt them before,
but last night,
when I spoke to them,
they answered.

This poem first appeared on Vox Poetica.
Used here with the author’s permission.