29 March 2021 – Bringing Down the Tree

In our far northern borderlands, we do things unimaginable to city dwellers. Even among us, many have never felled a large pine tree. Perhaps these same folks snip at hedges, mow lawns, spread lightweight fertilizer, and plant spring flowers. But how many, even here, have cut down a one hundred-foot, ancient pine tree with such girth that it exceeds a person’s arms circling its trunk? 

We “own” 20 acres in Beltrami Island State Forest which contains 703,382 acres. That total equates to just shy of 1100 square miles. Owning our tiny spot of land and taking down one tree (the subject of my poem today) seems too trifling to mention. But it’s impossible to think so when Forest trails in this magnificent place. If you lived here, you would hear the crackle and roar of the gigantic tree harvesting machines that run nearly every day of the year. If those who harvest are working close enough, the crashing of the trees as they fall is disturbingly audible. Those “in the know” say that chopping down hundreds of acres of trees is “good for the Forest.” They point to their reforestation in the areas that verge on clear-cuts, and say they are replenishing the tree loss. That may be so, but just look at the cornrows of the planting efforts. Those rows may be trees, but their regimentation that replaces a wild forest is like comparing a neat and tidy formal orchestra to a jazz ensemble playing for a happy, raucous crowd.

So, please consider the import of taking down this one tree within our grand Forest as you read the poem I offer herefor your consideration.

Bringing Down the Tree

 

                                    A life laid down

                                                what needed to be done has been done

                                                            one less witness standing

                                                no more wind-breath for this state of being

                                                            one hundred fewer birds in branches

                                                some dozens more dismantling trunk

 

                                                Before the felling, a man with thick strap and ladder 

                                                            a giant’s offenses hostile to the watcher

                                                Belt drawn tight opposes twelve-hundred horses                                                                                                                  

                                                Saw-bites snarling cracking carving wedges

 

                                    Final falling flails moss and lichened bark

                                                a thousand mortal existences leap off the one brought down

                                    Dropping from blue onto white

                                                out of time – ruined in space

                                    Diminishing from honorable upstanding

                                                a sudden death after many wounding tortures 

                                                shattering heartwood in the splitting

                                                slender branches tangling, spiking

                                                            soil like swords sheathing

                                                            dust and sand airborne soaring

slipping needles into ground like shreds of linen

                                                                                    sliding into parchment shrouds

 

                                    From the window, two dogs and I watch the trembling

                                                dropping lesser pieces of itself

                                    Me the monitor of the man’s safety

                                                the most loved one in all 

the world of lost-tree Forests

                                    His eye is clear – his measures precisely taken

                                                measuring in time what needs doing to sever feet

                                                            and lay the body down – a David and his Goliath

                                                            but this David has a pickup, a broad strap,

                                                            a turning saw girded with chains

            

                                    The long-standing tree proves no match for the man

                                                though its wood has sprouted some ninety years 

 

                                    This is the way of things

                                    The way we all will fall

                                                the reaping remembered

                                                            slowly taunting, the machine inches forward

                                                                        halts pulling counter to the giant’s momentary stand

                                    The saw bites again with no remorse or pardon

                                                The last act a fallen

                                                            warrior on a sterile battlefield

                                                                        without shield

                                                                                                legendary

                                                                                                            struck down cold, unburied

Background

It doesn’t take much to see that this poem chronicles an actual event.

Of late, we have taken down dead trees so that the wind or their age doesn’t send them crashing onto the cabin roof. Over the following days, we will take down several live trees, something we have never done before. We almost feel the sacrifice of our home would be preferable to snuffing out so many lives. The reason: “extreme” fire danger that has the earmarks of a long, deadly summer. It seems no one can remember a drier season here in Beltrami Island State Forest. Even the iced rivers are melting in place. The marshes are dry.

Every spring and summer, we harvest dead, fallen trees and split them in late summer and autumn. They will provide our source of heat for the winter. In twenty-two years, we have never felled a living pine, or any other tree. There is a theory that plants have feelings – different than ours – but feelings, nonetheless. If this be true, what might be the actual experience of a tree being cut down? If suffering exists, how is it expressed in that a tree has no identifiable voice to human ears? But wait. Trees do have voices. One of their articulations comes in the form of the play of wind in branches, leaves, and needles. Another language is spoken between trees knocking against each other under winds’ unpredictable currents. Sometimes, they lean against each other like good friends. One may support another from falling. Jack Pines can grow to one hundred feet tall on relatively thin trunks. It doesn’t take much wind to set them waving like a sailboat marina harboring dozens of sail-less, rocking masts. An amazing experience is to lean your back against a Jack Pine’s trunk and feel the low groan, the vibration of the force within the slowly bending stem.

Exploration 1: Have you ever felled a large tree? More than one? If so, what were your thoughts while doing this? If not, can you imagine what you would feel if you did so?

Exploration 2: Is there a “point” to this poem, or is it simply a poet’s musings?

Exploration 3: Do you think trees have feelings and that they suffering when assaulted with saws and axes? If so, what is the truth about any feelings during the splitting.