06/03/2026
To the ones gone to soon
Climb high cut small. Live and love like you climb, Hard and fast.
Ghosts in the trees...
In the hush before dawn, when coffee steams like mist through ancient leaves,
I scroll the quiet glow and feel the world tilt—
three more brothers fallen this week,
taken mid-reach by the green cathedral they sought to tame.
Not my crew, yet every one mine,
family forged in sawdust and sky,
where boots hit the floor and hearts climb anyway.We are the war-clad poets of the canopy,
civilian soldiers with no draft, no decree—
just a chainsaw’s hungry song and a rope’s whispered prayer.
Anyone may lift the blade, yet few truly hear
the trees’ low verdict, the sway that judges flesh and will.
One misstep, one gust, one hidden rot beneath the bark,
and dreams scatter like pollen on the wind.Yet still we rise.
I linger at the door with longer arms around my love,
breathing her like oxygen at height,
then kiss my sons and send my men into the arms of giants.
I hover like a mother hawk when branches groan,
yet trust the muscle memory, the sharpened eye,
the laughter that rings brighter than any warning bell. How the hours dance when we move as one—
jokes flung between limbs, stories braided through the boughs,
time collapsing into golden shafts of light
where sweat and sawdust fall like benediction.
The work feels like play until it doesn’t,
a blink, a breath, the difference between alive and legend.We make the impossible graceful:
ropes spinning symphonies, spikes biting true,
limbs descending in controlled surrender.
Clients see ease and name it cheap.
They do not see the years, the bruises, the nights we replay every cut.
They do not see the teachers driving hours for free,
YouTube prophets and conference saints
pouring safety like water over thirsty ground—
water too often refused, yet offered still.This is our craft, our quiet cathedral:
man and nature locked in loving war.
Even the masters fall—caught in the crossfire of wind and weight,
of hubris and heartwood.
One wrong move and futures fold like fallen leaves,
leaving wives and children to walk through nightmares
we once kept at bay with callused hands.So let this stand as tribute,
to every climber who kissed the sky and came home weary,
to those who didn’t, whose names now rustle in the treetops.
May your ropes hold true, your anchors bite deep.
May laughter echo louder than the saw.
May every dawn grant us one more beautiful, dangerous day
among the branches we both serve and defy.We smell the roses between climbs.
We hug longer.
We work like family,
because that is what we are—
brief, brilliant, rooted in courage,
reaching ever upward
until the last leaf falls.
