Lost Brother- Poetry Response

Lost Brother

I knew that tree was my lost brother
when I heard he was cut down
at four thousand eight hundred sixty-two years;
I know we had the same mother.
His death pained me. I made up a story.
I realized, when I saw his photograph,
he was an evergreen, a bristlecone like me,
who had lived from an early age
with a certain amount of dieback,
at impossible locations, at elevations
over ten thousand feet in extreme weather.
His company: other conifers,
the rosy finch, the rock wren, the raven and clouds,
blue and silver insects that fed mostly off each other.
Some years bighorn sheep visited in summer—
he was entertained by red bats, black-tailed jackrabbits,
horned lizards, the creatures old and young he sheltered.
Beside him in the shade, pink mountain pennyroyal—
to his south, white angelica.
I am prepared to live as long as he did
(it would please our mother),
live with clouds and those I love
suffering with God.
Sooner or later, some bag of wind will cut me down.

—Stanley Moss

On the surface this poem is about a tree that knows that it is just a tree that will never surmount to anything because it will eventually be cut down or die and fall.
The author is using a tree as his character and point of view because when people think of trees they think tall and stable. He is using the tree as his metaphor for people in society. We all compare ourselves with others and want to be as good as someone else. We want to make our parents or anyone else who’s approval matters to us, proud.
The point I think that the author is trying to get to is, that we as humans have faults and we all will compare ourselves to others, and will always try to be better, but the important thing is not to be as good as someone else, but to be as good as you can be because life is too short not to live it to your fullest potential. Sooner or later some bag of wind, or something, will be your downfall, or your end, and you want to have your past be the best it could have been.