One Poem by Robert W. Stephens

One tree

There is a warmth

Sitting on an outcrop of a

Speckled granite slab

0verlooking a deep alpine valley

Cold glacial river meanders through

Though the glaciers are lost

To a changing climate that is

Heating up millenniums after

The age of the ice sheets

Encroached on

The mountains high and deep

The offspring of continental drift

 

A lone tree stands along the ridge

A burnt-out sentinel

It did not survive this fire

Nor did its hardier neighbours

But it stands deadly still with a ragged holey cloth

Of scorched bark and blackened trunk

Its roots decaying in cracked granite

There will be a time

When lightening will find it

And strike it down

Its demise finished

In an alpine wasteland

The mountains absorb it

To make a bed for a new forest

For generations to come.

R. W. Stephens is a native of California, born in San Francisco. There was an extended sojourn to Wisconsin for university, then a return home with a BS in English. He raised two special needs kids as part of an interesting life, from working in a nuclear power plant to making specialty gas permeable contact lenses with a week in a village in central China inbetween. He recently started writing again with a new perspective. He has been published in a Lotherien Poetry Journal anthology He is the organizer and coordinator for a small writing group based in Hayward, California.