I found the ancient oak at twilight’s edge alone,
Its roots like gnarled fingers clutching lore unknown,
A thousand rings within its buried throne,
A testament to secrets never shown.

The bark was scarred with lovers’ carved initials,
Each ghostly trace by time grown indelible,
Like echoes fading from old rituals,
What’s left of hearts once indivisible.

I pressed my palm against its trunk and felt
The steady pulse of centuries aching deep beneath,
While all my modern certainties cracked, began to melt
Like morning frost upon a forgotten heath.

“What meaning endures in life?” I said to the tree,
Whose boughs clawed dusk’s extinguishing light,
It answered—not with verse nor elegy—
But bearing witness to the earth’s undying might.

The wind through hollow boughs exhaled a ghostly moan,
A dirge for all who’d rested in its shade—
Children’s voices lingered, their innocence long flown,
Now buried in the very ground they’d played.

It bore the burden of each desperate plea,
Lost vows entangled in its tome of rings,
As years collapsed to frailty and debris,
I felt as slight as specters, vanished from the living.

The ruined ages whisper dirges while they weep—
As its limbs held vigil over kingdoms’ ash and bone,
Guarding the dreams that mortals could not keep,
Immortal, ageless, eternally alone.

I thought of all the souls with ghosts of grief to wrestle,
Who’d asked the questions that now plagued my mind,
And found no answers in its primeval vessel,
Just solemn silence holding secrets we’ll never find.

The truth descended as the darkness grew:
That meaning wasn’t something to be found,
But carved, like names, in heartwood’s layered view—
Each life a ring that marks what fate had bound.

The oak would stand long after I had died,
My memory as faded as those names,
Yet every root would mock what men confide—
The living earth erases all our claims.