September’s Love Reflections: The Stories Trees Hold

Sometimes my words arrive as long reflections, weaving through all the lessons and metaphors I see. Other times, they take shape in rhythm and rhyme — a shorter style that carries the same heart in a different way.

This piece began as a longer free verse meditation on how trees hold stories, lessons, and mirrors of our own lives. From it, I shaped a shorter form, a rhyme to carry the same devotion in simpler breath.

Two voices from the same root, told in different ways — like branches of the same tree.

The Tree’s Song

A tree holds stories in its lines,
etched in rings by passing time.
It bends with winds, it knows the song,
of roots that hold, of strength that’s strong.

Its bark is scarred, yet still it grows,
it sheds its leaves, yet always knows.
That change is not the end, but more—
a cycle whispered, an open door.

In September’s light I see my own,
the ways I’ve bent, the ways I’ve grown.
Like branches reaching, yet firmly stayed,
a soul both fleeting and deeply laid.

The Stories Trees Hold

A tree holds stories in its bark,
lines etched by time,
years told in grooves and rings,
silent witnesses to every season.

If you pause, if you listen,
the tree will teach:
that roots must go deep
to hold steady in storm,
that branches must bend
if they are to survive the wind,
that leaves are meant to change,
to fall, to return,
and yet the trunk stands,
strong, unwavering.

Sometimes I wonder
what conversations live in the leaves —
each one a page of history,
shifting in the air like whispered poems.
Sometimes I marvel at the bark,
the way it carries scars and still grows.
Sometimes I sit beneath it,
not needing answers,
only needing its quiet.

Nature knows what it is doing:
where to plant a seed,
how to nurture its roots,
when to let go.
The tree does not argue with its place,
nor rush the seasons.
It knows alignment without question.

And in September,
as the air cools and the trees begin their turning,
I am reminded —
I too am meant to root deeply,
to bend without breaking,
to release what I cannot keep.

The tree is not only life,
it is a mirror.
It is us.

With Grace & Ink,

~Mai