If trees were given voice at last,
Would they recall the storms that passed,
With quiet grace or trembling breath,
Like something close to life and death.
I carry questions just like these,
In nights that never come with ease,
Where silence speaks in subtle ways,
And lingers longer than the days.
The house would hum when rain would fall,
A hollow drum along the wall,
We learned to listen, not to fear,
But read the weight of water near.
A careful hand would lift each thing,
As if it held a fragile wing,
Not out of want, but out of need,
To save what little we could keep.
The table told its quiet truth,
In measured rice, in borrowed youth,
Where hunger never raised its voice,
But stayed, a constant, quiet choice.
My father’s hands were never still,
They shaped the earth, they bent to will,
Carried more than they would show,
In calloused lines I came to know.
There were no words for what we felt,
Just passing glances, shoulders knelt,
A language built on what we hide,
And all the things we keep inside.
Some nights would stretch beyond their frame,
Where sleep and worry felt the same,
And dreams would drift, then slip away,
Like boats that could not choose to stay.
I grew where ground was never sure,
Where standing still meant to endure,
No steady place to call my own,
Just roots that learned to hold alone.
The sea was not a distant place,
It lived in every silent space,
In every doubt I could not free,
In every wave that carried me.
And still, beneath what bends and breaks,
There stirs a quiet something that wakes,
Not loud, not proud, not meant to show,
But just enough to let me grow.
So if the trees could speak one day,
Of storms that never chose to stay,
Perhaps they would not name the pain,
Nor try to thank the falling rain.
But in the way their branches rise,
And steady still against the skies,
You’d see it there without a sound,
The strength of roots that held their ground.
