The Sad Trees of Chernobyl

BBC Earth News

The sad trees of Chernobyl

are talking to the forests of Fukushima.

They are weighted with the grief

of being life-givers

who now bear radioactivity,
illness and death.

The wind blows through their branches,

wafting cancer towards the villages

where people are suffering and dying,

or being born already encumbered

by cells of death.*

"We are sad," say the trees,

"and we are lonely.

Because we carry the poison germs,

the people no longer come

to walk under our branches.

The children may not play and climb

and laugh along our limbs.

We have always been bearers of life

and now we are bearers of disease."

They wave their arms and weep,

these gentle tree-beings,

but, sadly,

even their tears

are filled with

death.

* trees hold radioactivity for a very long time. People within the vicinity of a radioactive "accident" are forbidden to go into the surrounding forests.

I have been profoundly impacted by re-reading Joanna Macy's  Widening Circles, which charts her journey through understanding the dangers of nuclear reactors, even in their dormant state, to the fate of the earth. Joanna, in her workshops all over the world, always begins with an Elm Dance, the people standing, becoming trees, and dancing together, arms waving like branches. 

The dance is for the healing of the trees, the planet, and all of its life forms - and to renew one's purpose of intention : to work towards a better and safer world for all beings. (Remembering that trees are beings, as are all life forms, and worthy of our care and concern.) As one of the women at the workshops said, "We are all branches of the same tree." That we are.