The Taking Tree

This one’s called The Taking Tree

Branching from classic Shel Silverstein

About a tree of ingenious design

That grew greedy hands upon its vines

Climbing up and up all of the time

With a very simple function in mind

To take and take whatever it can

To harvest all it could with its leafy hands

Invulnerable to man, nature, and disease

It aimed to be the unconquerable tree 

So its roots branched out

Its branches took root

And from a single sprout

Came a bounty of fruit 

Farther and farther the tree’s span began to roll

And quickly things went out of control

It swallowed up ferns and flowers alike

The mushrooms and mosses hardly put up a fight

Then The Tree had a budding thought

To take everything, well why not?

So it grew and grew to unsurmountable size

In desperate attempt to outspan the skies

A resistance tried to mount movements

They tried to move mountains

But not after too long they were all of them surrounded

They begged and pleaded and levied for peace

But The Tree could not be weeded, it was an insatiable beast

A choice was made, then some nuclear flashes

And The Taking Tree had become king of the ashes

So goes the story of how man with seed and spade

Came to cover the world in endless shade