The trees in the prairie creek beds
are not like bears
who wake up from winter
stretching and groaning and groggy
with their bad breath and heavy, sluggish movement.
They are not like people—
asthmatic after a bout with the flu; healing, but never coming back as strong as they were.
Winter makes us older.
Yet through the brittle battle of cold and wind–
the trees who stand there quietly
hosting their cocooned birds of prey
and doling out sincerity
are growing younger.
The cottonwood, oak, the birch, the cypress and dogwood–
all into their emerald magnificence each spring
as if it is a normal matter to gain more youth
and be delivered into one’s prime
again and again, year after year.

The prairie trees never age—
their green is green each Eastertide
inversely screaming youth with the voices of
adolescent boys
in the bodies of women.
Their fists are in the air and they go to war
and they consign and keep house in concert.

There is nothing more perpetual,
more fresh, more new or puerile
than the prospect of a prairie tree rising.
–KarenHansonPercy