Older people are respected
for their larger comprehension
of the traits that they detected
but the public does not mention.
A hundred years of try and error
constitute one human life,
sometimes wars and today’s terror,
envy, jealousy and strife.
But no other living being
gets as old as some old trees.
With eyes they could have been seeing
man’s common troubles and disease.
Only historians esteem
what trees lived through – no human’s dream.