A Lonely Pine Poem by Chima Ononogbu

Patter, patter, falls the rain
On the head of a lonely pine
Up in the air abandoned
By all, and finds neither friends, nor foes.
All alone, it stands in the vast emptiness
Of desolation.

But down its trunk,
Where the rain becomes a raging flood,
It darts its eyes
And comes upon another pine, a shadow; its shadow,
Just as it's, abandoned to drown,
Drowning in the flood.

"I'm neither lonely nor abandoned after all, "
Utters a lonely pine,
Rustling in a silence awash in ecstatic wind,
"In this flood another pine just as me,
But not me,
Drowns in its raging current,
And it's rocked back and forth
In a pendulous rage,
Like a log of wood in the hands of a blind sea roaring.
But here I stand, towering above the flood."

Then, like a bird upon a sudden windfall
Of grains by morning dews sweetened,
A lonely pine in endless euphoria sways,
Thrilling the wind to blow hairs to a humble stand.
For while another pine drowns,
It stands above the flood.

A lonely pine,
Albeit beating by rain,
To the freezing of its brittle bones drenched,
Yet to the rhythm of the rain sways.
For in the flood abandoned and drowning
Is another pine; though its shadow.
But above the flood it stands.