The Silence of Falling Trees

Does a tree need to be heard
to be a tree that has fallen?
Its weight cracks the air,
its body splinters the ground,
but if no ears catch the sound,
is its fall erased?

Does the forest mourn in silence?
Does the earth record its collapse?
Or is it only we who demand witnesses
to validate the quiet truths of the world?

And what of a writer?
Does a writer need to be read
to claim they are a writer?
If the words flow,
ink staining page after page,
but no eyes see their meaning,
do the words still matter?
Do they still exist?

Is the act of creating enough?
To bleed into sentences,
to carve ideas out of nothingness,
to send a whisper into the void,
not knowing if it will return.

Or is the writer like the tree,
their fall incomplete
without the witness,
their art unfinished
without the reader?

Perhaps it’s the act itself,
the fall, the writing,
that carries meaning.
A tree falls because it must,
its roots letting go of the earth.
A writer writes because they must,
their soul letting go of its silence.

And in the end,
whether seen or heard,
whether read or left unseen,
the tree still falls.
The writer still writes.