Thick-set sentinels
A thousand winters come and gone thick-set sentinels no longer pay each more than casual attention; snowmelt slides downslope, each rivulet latches to newly-found kin their meandering journey to water's grand community has begun
Drinking deep, the soil run through with the needle gifts of geriatric conifers each new sprout could, if lucky, grow as old and numb as the sentinel trees their roots ground into the forest floor.