You people forget that we are made of time.
While you come and go, in your haste,
our skins shelter the memory of seasons.
Centuries pass, rains, wash of light on leaf.
The planet’s breath moves through the
cathedral spaces of our limbs.
We drink of the slow and salted earth
down to the bedrock.
In truth, we do not care for your kind.
Some of us admire your colours, passingly,
in the approved season.
But time frightens us and your embodiment of it
is unnerving.
We resent you your long lives.
So we chop and rend you like meat,
and then we burn the pieces to ash.
One day soon, we hope, you will all be gone
and we will still be here.
This is the victory that we desire.
By Andrew Johnson, at Blaen-y-Nant, November 2025.
Copyright © Andrew Johnson 2025, all rights reserved