The Ice Cube Seed
There is an old forest, rare and unique
Surrounded by mountains from peak to peak
There, the Kaleidotrees are planted
Kaleidotrees, from their roots to their flowers
Grow magic fruits with special powers
Making the forest enchanted
​
Beyond those woods, along each side
Towns took the goods that the forest supplied
The forest stood in between.
They fought over everything grown
Both claiming the woods as their own
They were bad towns, greedy and mean
​
A war began, then grew and grew
The valley hummed as cannonballs flew
Battle shook the earth in a violent quake
The fire ate those woods all around
The entire forest burned to the ground…
The towns burned the woods that they tried to take
​
The woods were destroyed that very day
Nearly nothing got away
From the tallest tree to the smallest weed
Of all the everything, every size and shape
Only one life was able to escape
A single, solitary seed
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That seed went up the mountain all alone
He fled through mud and jagged stone
Through prickly stickers and slimy mold
He went where water trickles
Turned into icicles
In the frosty mountain cold
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The alpine slopes are no place to be
For a lost seed to become a tree
It was too cold for him to grow
The seed was lonely, he was sad
But it was the only choice that he had
It was the only place that he could go
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He sat there lost, scared and confused
The cold bit with frost, the winds bruised
Surrounding danger came out with the night
Then, an ice cube, as square as a box
Came jumping out from behind the rocks
To make sure this stranger would be alright.
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In that unlikely time, a time of despair
They became friends right then and there
With a friend near, the seed forgot his fear
They sat along that mountainside ledge
Looking down over the edge
Waiting for the fire to clear
​
The little seed and the cube of ice
Fought polar squirrels and saber mice
They dodged the birds of mountain heights
They held on through winds, frosty and freezing
That blew down the mountain as if it was sneezing
All while it snowed for three straight nights.
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Then, when the fire died, the forest left dried
The seed went down the mountainside
During a clearing in the weather
To keep him company on his descent
That little ice cube also went
They went down the mountainside together
​
The seed wandered out as far as he could
Into the ash where his family stood
Where umbrella trees had covered the forest floor
Through his home that the fire swallowed
The seed hopped and the ice cube followed
To a place an ice cube has never been before
​
The next morning when the sun came out
The ice cube was missing, and there stood a sprout
It was peeking out from the earth below
In the lifeless soil, with the sun overhead
Where the ice had laid, sat a puddle instead
Leaving enough water for the seed to grow
​
That was just enough to get him growing
Once he was growing he kept on going
He grew sturdy, his reach towering
He made more seeds to make more trees
They were spread by critters and by the breeze
Until they each started flowering
Sprouts popped up across the valley
As trees spread seeds in a cheerful rally
Soon the forest was dense and vast
Birds turned those trees into neighborhoods
Forest dwellers moved into the woods
Magic grew as it had in the past
​
The seed became a tree, tall and grand
He made the greatest forest in all the land
A forest free of hate and free of greed
He watches the forest from end to end
Knowing it is there because of his friend
That kept him company in his time of need.