And you trees down in your roots…
And you trees down in your roots to bequeath to all future trees,
My dead absorb or South or North–my young men’s bodies absorb,
and their precious precious blood,
Which holding in trust for me faithfully back again give me many a year hence….
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Witness trees. What memories are locked in the ancient wood, buried with the scars and bullets deep within their trunks.
And you could walk through and never know their secrets, all the lives and deaths plant and animal at their feet.
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