THE TREES GREET THE RAIN

You were gone so long the soil shrank back from our trunks.
Many of us fell, our roots having nothing
to hold on to.  Finding no water, our taproots 
struggled down until they tasted damp
at the planet's molten core.

                                               You have come back,
as you said you would.  We need you no longer.
We fear neither termite nor chainsaw.  We have drunk something
immortal, the Earth told us, and we have a new name:
Iron.  You can come or go as you will.
What can you do to us?