Timothy Sandefur

Sequoiadendron giganteum

These indulgent monarchs smile wordlessly
from a canopy above anything 
that’s urgent. Their silence doesn’t mean that they don’t care. 
It’s just they know how youths like us can be. They 
were new themselves, straining for the sky, in their 
primeval days. Now their shadows cover scars 
from flames they can’t recall, and cracks from ancient frosts.
Their centuries of branching were full of quakes and storms,
as well, but now those seem like so much wind. They’ve seen 
so many summers, the memories seem to shine 
sometimes at sunset, like the granite. They’ve watched whole rivers 
come and go, and countless other trees, and tiny 
things that strive amongst the ferns in fleeting light,
each one irreplaceable. Not that every 
fate’s a joy, but what may once have seemed like tragedies 
are blended now with the silver glow of twenty thousand 
moons that flowered open, then closed, enough. Now, 
there are other things they know: about the stars; 
about the dust; about the welcome touch of snow.

Timothy Sandefur is an attorney practicing law in Phoenix, and also the author of several books including biographies of Frederick Douglass and Jacob Bronowski, and a book of poems called Some Notes on the Silence.