Ages, empires
Siphoned into the skin of a sapling
Blood and bone, petrified
Demonstrative rings that echo
Empty memories, simpering symphonies
Twisting, twirling bands into the heart of a tree
Softly, history preserved in its skeleton
Stone through silicone chronicled in ringlets moving
Like clouds in a hurricane, circling the center, the eye that bears witness to time itself
Locked inside

Carbon dioxide sifts through branches like a sieve,
Droplets of oxygen emerge from the leaves,
Trees breathing wind onto our backs
Fathers, forefathers, legends' lungs have stolen sustenance from nature's deep gasps,
And these lungs, transitively, have touched ours

The green and the bark is paramount -
- Permanence in such a seemingly inconsequential body
Man may make history, but the trees remember
Far more than we may ever hope to make
         If we are stories then nature is legacy
For our lungs are metered,
Whereas nature breathes forever.