The beautiful hokku presented by a very gifted poetess, Paloma, seems fun and free spirited.  As I visualised these  anthropomorphic tree creatures, my mind wandered to the scary trees of the Wizard of Oz and then my mind wandered into darker places.  My mind imagined spirits long passed.  I could not help but hear the cries of children’s spirits walking towards the residential school in Cutler, Ontario.  My colleague was telling us about the stories and how the children`s park we were just passing on the way to the old condemned school, the cries of children were often heard in the night.

She told us how her great auntie and grandmother has been ripped away from their families over 1,000 miles North when they were five and six years old.

Well, that did it!  I could no longer think of anything else but ghosts and spirits lurking in purgatory or some haunted forest. And so, I came up with this completion.

rumbling winter storm –
ents are dancing with their wives –
ancient limbs entwined
© Paloma

wind moans like an old woman
searching for the samurai

petrified branches
gnarled hands of yesteryear
death watchers

famine damned innocents
the aging and infirmed

souls of sickly children
ents sing to mute their cries
haunt the forest

sea of trees wails
up to to Mount Fuji

©Tournesol’16/05/29