There’s a desert here, no, a wasteland.
Where a storm constantly fills the sky,
But rain never touches the cracked ground.
Nothing grows,
Nothing lives,
Nothing but a lone copse of blackened, gnarled trees.

Lightning flashes, striking true,
Sending out shards of long abused wood.
Fire dances across its surface,
But is quickly extinguished for lack of fuel,
The bark having been burned a million times,
Reduced to a skeleton.
Even so, by all accounts lifeless,
The tree still grows,
Unhindered by the sustained punishment.

They all still grow,
except for a single husk,
Lying dead in their midst.
This one grew quickly,
But put down shallow roots,
And when the lightning struck,
It couldn’t stand.
Rarely does it now draw the ire of the storm,
It has been forgotten.
A fortunate truth,
For the sapling that lives in its shadow.