I have, through no choice of my own, spent a lot of time on my back looking up. And realizing it is a different way to see the world. Lots of birds, clouds, and insects, and an extraordinary view of how the leaves and needles of trees are layered to catch every possible ray of sunlight throughout the day. And how the bottom branches, unable to spread any further, become redundant.
Just a dead branch
Somehow hanging on
Fibres woven long ago
Still holding.
A limb that once
Was indispensable
To sustain those thousand leaves
Each helping the towering tree
Reach its present height.
And now blocked from the light
By all that grew above
All those leaves are gone
Now just a perch for birds
A hiding place for insects
A memory of other days
Bark receding
Naked wood appearing
Content in knowing
That without the remnants below
The heights above
Could never
Have been attained.