The Boy and the Branch

The trees just stays planted where they are,
looking down from so very afar,
knowing that he would be the one,
and shaking in laughter before he'd begun.

They know his quest will end at the top,
they even know where the calmness will stop,
for these trees have sat for many a year,
and remember all the things from back then to here.

They remember the time that the first boy climbed,
when a long lost trial that had once defined
whether the man that was inside,
had yet to show his family's pride.

They had seen the sights that many had lost,
and although they did it with a cost,
they lasted longer than others have yet,
but they have seen too much, and wish to forget.

So as they watched him come up the steep hill,
they wanted what he would do, though he meant no ill.
He was just dared to a challenge, with no room to back away,
and must show all of his might, or be abandoned this day.

The trees looked down to him, knowing how far he'd come,
and understanding how little he meant to some,
and they decided that with their dying fall,
they would give him the gift to rise above all.

So as the the boy finally stood at the goal,
the trees finally let their old life take their toll.
They fell to their deaths around the young man,
and surrounded him, as only wooden walls can.

The tree of them lay there, leaving him safe,
although his chin was marked where branches had strafe.
He bore scars as a witness, as well as a branch,
that one day soon, he would decide to blanch.

He was shunned as a sinner when he had returned to his home,
for destroying the trees that many a man loved to roam,
and for not even completing what was the greatest test they've known,
and now that their gods had fallen down, they were to be overthrown.

The boy soon fled from his village's wrath,
not knowing that in the end, his would be the to last laugh.
He was doomed to wander the forests for life,
with no friends, no family, no saviour, no wife.

But in his everlasting retreat,
he found that it was one that would not beat.
He was left to live, and was helped by the wild,
for it was the one who had hindered this child.

And so, the boy lived his life with much grace,
and even looked after his own tribal race.
He watched them with his pure white tree leg,
even though all they had done to his life was renege.