Biological oaks
When people talk about their past
Their roots
When people expand their group of friends
That’s branching out
When people change,
That’s turning over a new leaf
If we use botanical metaphors for ourselves
Then why is the flora of the earth abstract
Inanimate. 
Maybe we fear to find a mirror image in a thistle 
Our hard exteriors
Our skin green
With the envy of the flowers
Our heartwood pulsing with the life blood of human existence
Since the first concept of life
we believed that
After you released your last breath into the atmosphere
Your essence reincarnated into nature