Races Ascending

Eucalyptus shades acacia:
The proximity dwindling the caliber of one
And distending the manifest bulk of the other.

Quick shapes merge but mix only
In the communion of decline, cycling perspectives
From wind-sent sapling to dangling leaf to fall to earth.

Never in the highest limbs
Is a true fusion feasible for the strife and clash
For the clearest light would tarnish the crowns, ending same.

It is that spectre of sameness
Which binds and severs acacia and eucalyptus,
Scaring each in paralytic fear of the other.

Eucalyptus rises unhinged,
Unbent in the scuffle for rank, freed to lilt roots
In ropes of strands and swords slicing the intimate shores.

Unsure and bent, acacia droops,
Burdened by the cries countless of limbs too cramped to live
Unmarred, sagging in the other’s overcast shadow.

To shade is to hear nearer cries,
And hearing, lilting bulk irks limbs in higher example
(though the dwindled believes it’s stranded, suffering only)

And both trees suffer and gain
In ascension toward the more direct channel of light
Which is beyond both as long as roots are earthentwined.