Leaves of Trees
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. Â
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
The child asks, what is grass,
Whitman explains it is the landscape
Of our lives, there for everyone,
Nature democratizing beauty
In a bed of grass for everyone,
Not just for the poet but for the farmer,
The grocer, the lost and the gilded,
So the trees of our great town,
The Bradford pear
The Norway Maples
Trees with their girth spouting,
branches reaching up in prayer,
Shading us and showering us with
A glory given only by the heavens,
Roots reaching down to soak up
Water traveling miles under our town
Square to link and hold our city
Remembering its history in the Civil War,
And before in the Revolutionary War,
Our heritage all linked to the main roadway,
Main Street where all gather to stroll,
Buy an ice cream, grab a coffee, a haircut,
A new pair of shoes – all our needs met
On Main Street, the street The Smithsonian
Called the best small town in America.
Think the trees had anything to do with that?
The arbor overhead, the clean smell in the wind,
The umbrellas of summer, lover’s canopy and
Shopper’s delight, to be held by the trees,
Fanned and rejoicing in their beauty,
So when the town decides to mow all the
Trees down, cut off every branch and twig,
Every log and bark, it is a massacre to all,
We are all being torn at the limbs, choked
At the neck, denuded, violated and killed.
When you kill one tree you kill them all, and
When you massacre all the trees you have
Killed the soul of the town,
Can’t you hear the souls of the trees pining,
Can’t you see the violation on the gutted
Sidewalks and gravel pits, the rich earth ripped,
The town dismal and shell-shocked,
Quiet and grieving for we are all massacred,
We are all part of the living soul of the town,
Forever torn down, fallen, dismembered.
It is all of us that have given our lives to the town,
Never to be resurrected in all its glory and grace,
We once showed the world we knew what beauty was,
We appreciated the simple goodness and green
Of our town trees, just simple wood and leaves,
We loved our majestic Pears and Maples,
The ballet of their tall columns, the whirr
Of their bowing branches, the protection
And stature they freely gave us.
So when you cut down one tree you cut down
And degrade the citizenry,
We no longer stand tall, we no longer stand free,
We are slaves to the Town Managers,
Pawns to the Department of Transportation,
We have all been cut down to size
And we weep for our lost place in the heart
Of Great Barrington.
Who is the man that chainsaws the trees?
Where is his heart under the hard hat,
Town uniform and buffalo boots,
How can you take a razor edge to a trunk,
Watch a tower turn into a stump,
Ugly and lowly, after you drive your cherry
Picker to detwig and slash branches,
After you take the back hoe and mawl out
The stump and the roots,
After you use your caterpillar to flatten
The evidence that a tree ever lived here,
Using the iron and steel of machines to
Break the back of nature, destroy natural
Water and root systems, choke life at the root
Or the trunk, turn matter into mulch,
The upright into the log jam,
How do you, Mr. Tree Surgeon, kill your patients?
Rob the town of oxygen, birds and squirrels
Of homes, lovers to scrawl their initials,
Do gooders to post their notices, and town squirers
To note changing traffic patterns,
How do you turn your blades on the innocent?
Now the town is bare, the sky is revealed
And the ghosts of trees wander the town
After dark, carrying grandeur behind them
Like a lost relative,
We who are left behind mourn you, oh trees,
For every leaf lost is a soul lost,
The leaves, like Whitman’s grass were nothing
And everything,
The nothing of matter all around us,
Common and ubiquitous, plentiful and ordinary,
Like humanity all around us, the personal is the universal,
We are all one leaf, one living system unto itself,
Yet tied like the veins and the roots to the whole of the tree
And to all the trees, all the town’s life and heart beat.
Each leaf a sign of life, each person a member of a community,
If you hunt us down and snuff us out, our ghosts will wander
The streets forever, dragging the hems of our torn garments,
The detritus that was our life force, the nothingnss of our existence,
Dear town, you have forced the Forest of ,,,,,,,,,to come to Dunsename,
Nothing good can come of this.
