“Methuselah” the Bristlecone Pine of the White Mountains

(The Oldest Living Organism Known to Humankind)

Before the pyramids had seen
the light of day, my wood
began to slowly grow from bone-dry
earth. It’s understood

I’m older than the oldest redwood,
baobab, or fir.
Sol’s photons, whizzing through the chill
of space-time, minister

to all my chlorophyll. I may
as well be on the Moon,
for none but boffins know just where
I stand, or I would soon

be harmed by heedless tourists, over-
joyed to say they’d seen
my gnarly branches. Thriving in
adversity, I’ve been

through climate change, frigidity,
high winds, and wars. I grace
the granite and the dolomite
atop this rocky face

where marmots, bighorn sheep, and horses
roam. My dotage gives
no pine nuts to Clark’s nutcracker —
a crow-like bird which lives

a life of bustle, caching seeds,
existing for a breath —
while I, who’s aged five thousand years,
am nowhere close to death.