Author: Reed
Winding roots the sturdy shackles.
Family name a choking vine.
Father fixed far away.
Mother hovers, gentle sway.
Ancestry, authority.
Family, slavery.
Sister tree, shelter me,
still vale of my anxiety.
Leeching roots, damp and dirty,
Steals from us what keeps us sturdy,
and only through them filtered rancid
drinks the water withered branches
Spokes of seasons, wheel of time.
Drought and desert, flood and blizzard.
Fretting fruitless, fit and choke,
Grieving leaves fall from the oak.
Germinate, obliterate.
Generate, incarcerate.
Leeching saplings strangulate,
so only tall proliferate.
Protection with your leafy roof
From warm embrace of sunlight through,
And keep the sapling low to smother
In cold shadows of the mother.