Death on the Highline Canal
The cottonwood trees along the Highline Canal are dying now,
or dead.
Their sun-bleached trunks and broken limbs lie across the sand
where water flowed,
but doesn’t now.
Yet still, each spring, those that remain,
and many do,
send aloft a billion tiny seeds,
wrapped in spheres of cotton,
hence the name.
With the hope, if trees can hope,
and I think they do,
though not like you and me,
that some will drift to a cool, damp place,
take root,
and carry on the line.
Or better still, that one such sphere, or even more,
may bear the mutated seed from which will sprout
A plant to bear the heat, withstand the drought,
The cottonwood of our future.