The woods (Day 1107)

The morning the bulldozers arrived

dawned cold and gray in that 

soft-focused way midwinter has 

of lulling you into believing it might 

soon come to an end.

Unbeknownst to us, during the night, 

a fleet of equipment had trundled in. 

Now they hid, noses to the ground, m

shrouded by dried grasses and

the fragile embrace of leafless limbs.

As dawn melted into day, those great 

yellow beasts began to stir, belching 

smoke and raising a metallic roar. 

At this, the nearby trees trembled 

for the terrified creatures dwelling 

among them. The creatures trembled,

too, for the trees, whose presence was 

often their only solace, their shelter 

from a mystifying, encroaching world.

Still, the rumbling giants came, 

and woods and woodland creatures 

trembled in vain. 

One by one, the machines turned 

their relentless force against the trees. 

So divided, they fell, trunks snapping, 

each rending the air with the prolonged 

crack of a shattering heart. 

Without a pause, eight gap-toothed 

blades advanced upon the sleeping fields,

while, behind them, a handful of men 

fed the remains of sentinel elms and 

towering oaks—neatly piled, like bodies 

after a bloody battle—into an insatiable 

maw. 

At day’s end, the ground bore only 

a trace of golden dust, which the wind 

swirled into a ghostly forest that rose 

and fell throughout the night.

The next morning dawned cold and gray,

in that bitter way winter has 

of reminding you it has not even begun. 

And we, venturing out, saw this:

Where once a life-giving woods grew tall,

now there is emptiness. 

Where once fertile fields rippled and 

bloomed, now there is only dust.

(c) 2020 by Hannah Six