The Will to Survive

You see it in humans all the time,
extraordinary measures to stave off
the ravages of dread disease, and you can
talk to those people to feel inspired
by their courage and determination,
but when walking through what seems
a dark medieval forest, the coniferous
crowding out the deciduous,
stands of hemlock spreading their poison,
and you come across a tree seven feet
in diameter at the base, the trunk
multi-lobed, several eaten away, decayed
to a considerable height, and you crane
your neck to look skyward as far
as you can, yet see nothing except
dead branches all the way to the canopy,
but up there, at the top of several
trunk stems, you spot a lush growth
of maple leaves despite the months-long
drought, you know that plants, too,
have fortitude, even if the only way
they can tell you is to continue being.