phonetics of trees

I am not very good at reading the phonetics of trees. Near the top of Lookout Hill maybe others have also noticed a young Hawthorn with a small cup-shaped nest resting at the tip top, and maybe they've been able to understand what it had to say. Maybe they noticed the thorns, long and cruel, strong and flexible on the newer branches that grow up the sides and along the base of the older, darker trunk. This young tree says a lot, marking either your descent or ascent. Not so much no thorn, no rose—no thorn, no new beginning swimming the world in a tea cup under the the stars in a house speeding through galaxies while remaining still. This is something no hand of man made.

Other trees spoke to me about the cruelty of change, conversing with the existential terror I bear, an ache that accompanies weathering, withering, erosion, existence. I've watched myself, my friends and relatives undergo a very large change recently and simultaneously grieve for a level of safety and sense of justice that it turns out was the exception to eons of governance. The enormous change disorients, lays one's sense of identity and certainty low like these weather-battered tree trunks on the side of the hill, dark and soaked from 2 days of rain, lined, terrifyingly, beautifully, richly with details only bought with the most exquisite patience. Invisibly in between viewpoints, birds weave new beginnings from the supple stalks no man ever saw.