You know there is a spirit in the tree.
You know because each one stands with its hands so delicately lifted.
They reach with arms.
They point.
When chopped, when shorn, standing flatly, disgraced, limbless, they mourn.
And what points, what lifts, what stands, what mourns but a spirit?
When storms tousle their leafy stomachs, ruffling and lifting their arms, they weep, they laugh, they cry, they dance.
They turn and bend.
They beg.
They stand, resolute, their trunks crackling upward from the firm soil like great Earth-Whales permanently breaching the waves, their stomachs spotted with lichen barnacles, arms lifted heavenward, spouting their spray, but never heaving downward.
Upward, they remain, upward, they look, upward they point.
They hope.
They “clap their hands”, too, reflecting human release from bondage. Good poem.