Tree Spiking

Light filters through the green canopy
illuminating a carpet of browning leaves
which the grey and gold tinged
fungi will transform
into next season’s canopy
that will house chickadees,
goldfinches,
honeybees,
stick bugs,
and countless beetles.
Ferns growing in the shade
protect young rabbits, and field mice,
food for lynxes and fox that burro
under fallen rotting trunks.


Here green clad eco-soldiers,
environmentalist, primitivist, activist,
and as alive as the forest,
drive ten inch nails
into the trees that they
love so much,
to save them
from the chainsaw,
and the mill
where men labors,
unable to work elsewhere.

Earth First! can’t understand the destruction
of the world we share, but

the mill workers can’t fathom the
industrial saw blade lunging towards them
barbed teeth hungry for life.