Today They Killed A Tree

poetry by Christine Johnson

Today they’re cutting down a tree in Seattle,

That I’ve looked upon often from my porch.

Woebegone and moaning as the chainsaws go;

What did that noble tree ever do to them,

To deserve such a horrific fate?

My view is so bleak now;

Nothing but cheap vinyl siding,

And electrical wiring.

The Earth is crying today with me;

I can feel her with me.

And all the birds who loved that tree,

Nevermore will they sit in her branches and sing.

And the men with the chainsaws and chippers:

May they one Day meet in Dante’s Inferno,

To be disemboweled with chainsaws,

And thrown into chippers,

And scattered to the four corners of hell.

They just felled the trunk of the tree,

And I watched as it fell to the ground.

Overtaken by despair when I felt the pound,

Now I can only see gray in the sky,

And tonight all I’ll see is black.