Branches: A Poem

Adam and Eve, life’s first breath drew,
A family tree began anew.

Their children born, their children warred,
The Fall, the Devil’s calling card.

Cain slew Abel, jealously,
A stain upon their tapestry.

And generations came and went.
Their progeny in a descent.

Then Sodom and Gomorrah came,
Their lineage in ruin and shame.

They sacrificed to Moloch’s call,
And fell into the Devil’s thrall.

A second chance, a world undone,
A storied tapestry unspun.

But Noah heeded prophecy,
And carried on the legacy.

A single branch, a glimmered light,
A flicker in a fading night.

Descendants spread both far and wide,
All shades of wheat upon the tide.

Heroes, villains, kings, and thieves,
Their stories echoed through the leaves.

From battles lost to love forsaken,
Legacies forever taken.

Disease and war, its toll so high,
Branches wither, branches die.

A young man, barely twenty-one,
Marched off to war, his line undone.

A man, too shy to meet his wife.
He died alone, a wasted life.
The void he left grows over time,
A lineage lost, amplified.

In modern days, the branches break,
Some choose to end their own life’s stake.

Morality, a compass lost,
Many branches are its cost.

A man, identified as she,
Embracing change, had broken free.

A woman, focused on career,
Missed her chance, her clock ran clear.
She never understood the cost,
Her motherhood, a total loss.

A young couple seeking advice.
A grandmother, thought old and wise.
She recommends they get a pup,
For raising children costs too much.

Another woman, cats her keep,
Replaced the love she’d never meet.

A boy, so lonely in his youth,
Never knew this bitter truth:
His would-be best friend, never born.
A bond that never could be formed.

A divorcee turns boy to girl,
And forces him to give a twirl.

A man paired with another man,
And two more branches meet their end.

A woman, now on life support,
Disfigured face, a broken heart.
Her husband, soul of bitter stone,
Has pulled the plug, true nature shown.

Another woman, dignified,
Stepped into a machine to die.
A peaceful passing, she had planned,
To find out that her soul was damned.

The unborn tales ever unspoken,
Tragedies that leave us broken.

Couples, thinking young and free,
Their terminated pregnancies.
Their careers priority.
The children could no longer be.

The silent cries, these lives denied,
The future losses, magnified.
Their absences scarring the tree,
to an unthinkable degree.

A house of cards that could collapse,
So many branches, dead and passed.
The tree once grand, now fractured, lost,
Its roots remain, but at what cost?

So honor those who came before,
The ones who persevered and bore,
And brought you to this world despite.
Our presence here, a beacon bright.