Magnificent Regression

I know this looks like any old stump of a tree, 

but how I love to sit and listen to its ghostly music

and threads of stories I can almost hear or see,

What creatures made it home in nest or hollow?

What child crawled out upon its limbs?

And did lovers carve their names for those to follow 

to mark a meeting place of moonlit secret trysts?

Children playing, horses neighing, contribute to the city drone,

but were they Yankee or Confederate soldiers

who rested there and longed for home?

Are determined roots still climbing toward the sun?

Or has it simply stopped surviving

in the struggle for a peace hard won?

I know.

This looks like any old stump of a tree,

but to me, it is a magnificent regression. 

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