Trees

Our lane, named for a sacred place

of the Algonquin Indians, rides up

from the main road and mailboxes

through a thicket of western yellow pine.

Cones lie in the lower drive,

ungainly creatures of the woods,

though we’re only two miles

from the modish headquarters

of the future here—Tesla,

Facebook, all the latest dot coms.

Every week, it seems, our landlord is

cutting down trees, as if

in some kind of blood feud.

The eucalyptus shimmering like rain

outside our front window.

Half of the big old pine.  Oak limbs.

And when I drop my guard

for no more than a moment,

another sturdy, blameless trunk.

I feel these losses keenly,

knowing by heart our family history

in the evergreen forest of the northwest,

the apple orchards of Basse-Normandie—

a clan of trees.

My father and his father

scrupulously tending their fire lookouts

on Mount Washburn

and high above the Nez Perce Forest.

Our good kupuna friend planting

papayas and mangos on the Kohala Coast.

Those elders of the tribe, those who

taught me compassion for all things.

I look out from my writing room

on the ruins of the big pine

that sheltered the clothesline;

smell resin

like an intimation of distress

in the December air when I get home.

And alongside the driveway

just this week, I see, all of

the old peach trees are coming down,

while up on Deer Creek

where swaybacked gray horses

graze beside the road

above a menacing huddle of bulldozers,

I pass a sprawling oak in noble silhouette

against the darkening sky—

exactly like the tree in the green paddock

of the miniature riding school

I badly wanted as a child, but soon

lost interest in when my parents finally

bought it for me.

The coveting more urgent somehow

than the having.

There are essential lessons

everywhere still to be learned.

But how are we to learn them,

now that those who have our lives

our living in their care

are cutting down all of the trees?

—Christie