Development

Threatened with development, our woods seem tired;
With the promise of suburban living, all their life expired.

Even branches on the trees seem lower now
Than last year – or is it just that boughs

Are weighted down with sleep, with snow; looms
As bent and slow to rise as half-built rooms?

Giving up the only home they ever knew,
Trees lie here on the ground, buried where they grew,

Covered by the housing of the snow, turned
To lumber by the metaphors that men have burned

In bark: the surveyor's stained-green mark
That rings the tree with populated dark,

Emblem of an easy life that digs up death,
Tree trunks creaking with the constant breath

Of even dying things, the to and fro
Of a universal lung on its pillow in the snow,

The heave and sigh of trunks that long since died
Which lie here still, sleeping with their eyes wide

Open, like yogi's hearts that beat long after
Minds have died, or leaves on trees that stir

In winter when the sap is dry, lifeless
On the limbs like white-veined fists.

But what is better housing to a forest
Bed, with its history of birth and rest?

I push an old tree over as I pass, and then
Look down – beneath the snow, uncovered when

I blundered into nature's plan,
Dropping neatly into place the final span,

As if someone had intended just this tree to fall,
And where something sixty-five feet tall

Had stood three beats before; beneath the snow,
And looking for a chance to grow,

Two small plants like clover wait,
Which might have died, had I been late.

December 26th, 2004, or earlier