Pine Drive

Today, on my way home,

I suddenly found

all of the trees had been cut down.

Firm young firs grappling with the ground

for a foothold.

Tall knotted grandmothers

comfortably growing still more old.

Straight-backed oaks,

breaking the gray of my dark

winter days.

Chopped-hacked-

sawed-chunked-piled.

Awaiting their turn 

to be carted away.

I was enraged.

Who gave whom 

the right to ruin

so many days and days

of sunshine and of rain?

Who gave whom the 

right to ruin the holding away of 

empty space that these trees had

claimed?

I saw,

scattered on the ground like thick pick-up sticks,

black plastic pipes,

awaiting their burial.

Who will bury my trees?

My half-mile or so of wooded drive,

raped and plundered in the half-day I was away?

Who will fill the empty space where all the 

growing things have now been razed?

They, they, they,

have emptied my day of a comfort

I did not know I had.

They, they, they,

have chopped to bits and pieces a thing

that only just existed.

I will forget in some number of days.

I will find a different way to go.

My eyes will rest unseeing on some other holder of place,

until that, too, 

is one day,

suddenly,

taken 

away.