It's Necessary To Talk About Trees Poem by gershon hepner

IT'S NECESSARY TO TALK ABOUT THE TREES


It's necessary to talk about the trees
which are being sacrificed by men
who, spreading like a virulent disease,
uncaring as a cruel carcinogen,
destroy their habitat and fill the air
with gases trees once would transform to ox-
ygen. Now no less helpless than the sheep
which could not understand the paradox
proclaiming that their sacrifice might keep
the slaughterers from harm, the trees men chop
or burn are forced to waste their chlorophyll
as sheep were forced to waste their blood. To stop
arboreal holocaust transcends the will
of those who know if we can't coexist
with trees we all will disappear like them.
Like sheep, the trees of course cannot resist,
unable to protest ad hominem.

Adrienne Rich died on 3/27/12 in Santa Cruz, at the age of 82. Dennis Bartel on KUSC broadcast a recording of her reading her poem, "What Kind of Times Are These? "

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.

3/29/12 #9721