Cut open to count the rings

[Keith]

Edit 1

A held-tight crow aviods the murder,
deep within a melencholy mist.
He calls on discarded scraps,
crusts in crumpled foil
like bodies through a windscreen.

Arthritic branches knuckle
between the fingers of new growth,
letting mud-caked Wellingtons
take time to rinse red.

Their loss looks up
through a pale canopy,
as a softly spoken leaf
falls to the forrest floor.

How can this old tree survive
when weak limbs break and seedlings die?

Original
A child-minding crow
calls out through morning mist
as it clings cold
on banks of quiet bracken.
He follows footsteps for scraps
kept hidden from the murder.

Gnarled oaks watch saplings take shape,
bent by the wind's advice,
arthritic branches knuckle
with fingers of new growth
as mud caked wellingtons rinse
red in pathway puddles.

Twirling loss under a bare canopy
questions push speech on falling leaves
and listens to the moss covered bark
of a broken soldiers stride.
Why do these old trees survive
when all their pretty has gone and died?