My heart told me to strike the nail into my palm and thus
impale my hand onto the center of the freshly severed stump.
The poplar was a century tall until my word command it fall and
flop into the field that rings the cemetery rocks and things that once were
precious to the ones who left stacked stones, iron tools and bones.
But my head decided, “No. This psychotic guilt shall go into
the pocket brain abode that keeps such danger safely stowed.”
The mighty trees that used to be have been blown to the
ground for me to rake and gouge, and profit take from the resulting mess I make.
But now, the Logger, he must have a sweeter cause to harvest
horizontal logs and so I give him several of these tall and healthy mighty
trees.
(It seems he cannot understand the value placed upon the
land that does not register in cash but an aesthetic beauty stash.)
But I, in haste to heal the land, impatient to let Nature’s
hand have years to dampen wood to dirt, let violent ripping of the saws and
crushing tires and dragger jaws chew the life from leaf loam litter to expose the
bare and bitter under-layers of lifeless soils.
The hammer falls.
My heart recoils.
