Sequoias

In thinking of the sequoias, I remember Tolkien's Ents. I imagine sequoias speaking slowly, maybe one word every ten years. If I listen long enough, sit with them long enough, maybe I will hear a word or two.

In California the sequoias

Are stressed

By four years of drought

Even as South Carolina floods

And floods

And floods again.

Stress arrives

In so many forms.

Today brings with it

Its own stress.

Today

Here

Now

It is not the rain

Or lack of it.

The sequoias live

Thousands of years.

I would like to sit

With sequoias

Hold their branches

Touch their roots

Tell them

This too will pass.