Entering the forest,
there's a feeling of connection,
of being welcomed in
to a green and peaceful world
where everyone is kin.
Tall cedar,
spruce and hemlock,
candelabra snags,
hollow root-beds
for small critters
and mossy, rocky crags,
are homes for the wild ones
- squirrels and owls,
wolf and bear -
there is a kinship
in the forest
all we trees and beings
share.
Fern and salal,
and old man's beard,
mushrooms beside my boot,
fiddleheads and swamp lanterns,
sedge, salal and root;
- nurse logs thriving
with new growth
and ever-thrusting life -
in the forest,
all is hushed
and absent of all strife,
and I, who am the go-between,
from this other-world
to mine,
would like to polish up
the green,
and make the whole world shine,
spread this blissful peace
to you,
in just the perfect rhyme
that will save
these ancient trees
that are
as old and rare
as time.
This forest
will soon be gone;
the town creeps closer
every day.
I hear
their silent plea,
whispered, so sweet, to me.
I walk its trails
with guilty sorrow,
turn my eyes away.
Mea culpa, mea culpa
that I've
no power to let them
stay.
A poem from last spring. Some of this beauty has already been turned into bare scraped earth in the nearby Tonquin Forest. Some of us are working hard to try to save the remaining forest.
Shared with earthweal's open link
My hopes and thoughts are with you and your forest Sherry.
ReplyDeleteThis is a wonderful poem.
A poem celebrating the forest and sadly an elegy too...JIM
ReplyDeleteThe forest elements are richly named and savored in the saying, enough to create this lush verdancy. Such wild thought is betrayed by the clear cutting, is its condemnation. If only the sawheads could read poetry.
ReplyDeleteThe photos are beautiful and you do hear their ancient whispers and pleas to let them live in these times of uncertainty.
ReplyDeleteEveryone please sign the petition to save the forest Sherry writes about: https://www.change.org/p/tofino-council-protect-and-save-the-rest-of-tonquin-forest-from-further-development
ReplyDelete