Memorial on Highway One

Stopped at the traffic light near the
cheap gas station and the
town’s favorite burrito place,
I’m waiting to turn left, when
a truck pulling two trailers of felled redwoods,
passes ever-so-slowly on my right.

 Five trunks on one trailer,
six on the other, they are huge.
Eleven recently-living, towering
trees, harvested from their forest homes with immense
sharp blades, metal hooks, deafening noise and noxious diesel fumes.
Dragged away with chains, stripped of branches
and leaves, hoisted into the air and dropped
onto steel gurneys to be hauled away.

I feel grief as the tree-bodies go by. Beautiful, naked,
wrapped in amazing bark, a skin no human
could fashion or wear. So obviously slaughtered, but the murder
unnoticed, unacknowledged by the dozens of other drivers,
walkers, humans on their bikes.

But I see and am pierced. As the truck fades away I am
in church. Incense, the belching black smoke from twin stacks
towering over the truck cab. Red votive candles as the driver
suddenly brakes and stacked tail lights
appear on the back ends of all three vehicles.

I see . I care that you are no longer waving your limbs, fluttering
your leaves, nor sheltering, birds, insects, squirrels. I pray for
the peace of your tree-souls. May angels, if there are such beings, watch
over you. May the life force you released move lovingly
to wherever it is that spirit exists.

I’m sorry for your death. I'm sorrier for ours.

​Watch a film of trees being cut down ….

Surprisingly, almost all of the material in a tree is nonliving.
Only the leaves, the tips of the branches and roots,
and a thin layer of cells just under the bark are actually
alive. When a tree grows taller, the growth takes place
only at the tips of the stems