The only witnesses who remain
are the coconut palms
my father’s father planted.
They still stand, tall and thin,
though their trunks
have curved with age,
and entwined in their rings
of fronds, my existence,
proof I lived there once,
on the same land
and played in the puddles
underneath their leaves.
These palms sensed my first steps
and felt my heels bear deep
into the dirt under my last
when I tried to stay with them.
The trees heard and watched
until I had to be dragged away.
The Coconut Palms Remember
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