Massacre Poem by Mary Champion

These trees have stood a hundred years, reaching for the
sky,
but men have murdered them in minutes - I weep to see
them die.
Silently, they stood and grew through rain and sun and gust
but roaring motorised machines have ground them into
dust.
We care as little for the works of nature as of man -
mindlessly we cut them down with no coherent plan.
We see them as embarrassments, as checks we can't
permit -
too hurried to work round them - to carve our path to fit.
The past is the foundation of the present - not a wall -
rebut it or remove it and the edifice will fall.