Poem from the Garden
I’ve been out visiting the misty redwoods
up here in Humboldt County, seen their shady
roots like earth-churning muscles, thick veins pumping
life up through the ridged bark and swole burls until
it bursts fluorescent green against the rain-soaked
sky in an overstory thick with ferns,
sour huckleberries and soft, endangered marbled
murrelet chicks. But even millennia-old great,
great redwoods fall, smash soft against the root-writhed
ground, where in that twilit green world, new life curls
out, growing from small seeds tucked safe within their
rough, ruddy bark. All tree death brings life, not just
in dripping quiet forests, but in our own
church yard, where the pines have been slowly turning
brown for years. Soon, we'll cut them down, lest they smash
against the cars and kids and fences that climb
on their roots, veins full of bark beetles eating towards
their hearts. We'll turn their boles to seating, mulch for
the garden, tall trees becoming more rich life
around us. I'll mourn their achingly tall crowns,
their shade-filled offerings in the hot summer sun,
and also I'll rejoice at the chance to plant
new life, for something suited to our changing
new climate to curl, green and swift and strong, from
the roots of the trees we've loved and lost and who --
just like their sister redwoods, up here in the
cool north -- must find a time to fall. Our job,
as I see it, as caregivers of trees,
is to help them do it softly, if we can.
