DANIEL MCFARLAND     Page 4

MARCH OF THE TREES

what do we see by wintry weathered trees,
clinging high for a breath of air?
from out a hard seasoned battle
waged and over,
pale from exhaustion,
unaware the war was won:
soon the victors shall blossom.

back upon nightfall,
singly standing troopers on patrol
wary to an onslaught of blistering cold.
below search lights,
through dank blue and misting plague,
imperiled in the only weaponry they've just stayed:
thousand spiny swords protruding from their guts
and flung up.

beset by bone-bleeding freeze, it seethes;
as a wind whips through the march of these trees
silhouettes become fortresses sieged.
leo's low drawn pace now stalks
atop the hunter and his bow;
the enemy's toll.
flocks flung far and wide in the wake
of a wretched surprise;
watch towers thrashed in the throw;
hear: some fall.

destitute to grasp the sheer strength of their bark,
impelled to attack an impetus,
to stand against Eden's corruptions
wielding carnage in the face of destruction.
perched in blackening rifts
nightingales and skylarks aid the skirmish,
through wounds where scavengers reek,
feast, as phoenix to pyre thrashes
through myrrh its mate,
and shrill once melodious songs
where foul drenched, dread struggles were gone.
amber mixture in moonlight thereby born
in the dawn of a star's arrival;
vapors and earth meld where fought,
cast to a legacy of withdrawal.

fields afar where carcass and member lie withering,
their orphaned babes haggard by the fight,
are yellowed in an icy aching
under howling cries of hollow tempests.

the battalions after battle,
the enemy wore them down,
May as autumn's hidden glory,
for more took ground.

calamity still lingers
in wake of another seasoned wane,
yet let in sooner,
they shall fight until won again.

streams now trickle through the trenches
from under tunnels and moss-laden stones,
carried in reparations
to soak and feed their battered souls.

many in a death bed, mangled and bleary,
where others become cathedrals to the sun,
rot out pithily
into a troth where blood is wrung.

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