This is an older poem and one I love. I live across from a park and theses trees are like friends. I am so delighted that it was published by Vistas & Byways Journal at San Francisco State Spring, 2019.

Dignity of Trees

Torn limbs expose the inner flesh.
In the small park where we live,
branches hanging by splinters,
after night rainstorms.

They grip the sandy hillside,
heads swaying, touching.
Their bark is streaked in wet,
invisible ravens sheltering beneath boughs.

Too soon City trucks come to cut
and trim each branch.
The old Monterey pines and cypress fall.
Grubs, then woodpeckers, gone.

Better to let them stand,
cracked boughs clothed in dignity,
limbs decaying
in their own slow time.