Vermont's World Tree

I’ve seen a million sunsets and sunrises, yet each day still dawns with new surprises. As the sun peaks its golden rays over the green mountains, Vermont’s future stretches out with new horizons. From seedling to sapling, to towering maple, I have been here. I stand on this hill, roots planted forevermore, watching the world go by. Alive for eons, yet still young in the many turns of the earth. 
Years have passed, a millennia. And now we stand, halfway through the century, but a new age seems born. 
I remember when the summers were milder, the autumn’s brighter, the winters colder- yet not all hope seems lost as turbines spin upon distant mountaintops, harnessing the wind as they spin in a loop of eternity, dystopian yet beautiful, as a abstract sculpture is to a child.

Sometimes, people walk by me, hand in hand lovers, men with women, men with men, women with women. To me, there is no difference. There are children, as well- little boys and girls hand in hand with parents, a diversity as beautiful as a rainbow through the downpour.

Once upon a time, a seed was planted. Once upon a time, it was beaten down, torn out, yet still it grew against the odds. Once upon a time, life broke through where none thought possible. 
Forests round me flourish, leaves growing and falling in the cycle of life. Wildflowers bloom in fields where sunshine glows, and panels drink up its unending energy.
Years ago, this place I call home was in peril. Once, peace was a resource that was running out- but it did not wither and die. No, the children of the children grew up and took it in hand with care. 
A new generation was born- and with it, new ideas, new hopes, new dreams, new visions. 
The civil war that humanity fights within itself is not over, no, it almost seems never ending. But the fighting is slowing, the rain of bullets lightning to a drizzle as a new age turns the corner. All this I see from my post, a world tree keeping watch as always.

There will always be people who want to turn the world back the way it was, in the ages of oppression. There still are those who would like to chop the newly planted forest down, only to replant their own ideas, their ideals. But in these rolling hills, these forests that come alive in the fall, we are paving the way for a new world, where love is love, and we know that the earth is our home to take care of. 
In Vermont, we have paved the way, set the norm, been a symbol of good in the world for generations. In Vermont, the future is what matters, and we continue to fight for it. 
My trunk is tall, my branches long, my roots reaching ever deeper. I am the emblem of Vermont, and I am only growing higher as the world is born anew.