Girdling

When you girdle a tree, it dies within days.
When you clear-cut a mountain, it dies just as fast—
measured in the lifetime of mountains.

When the red soil washes down in the spring rains
like sap bleeding from a trunk.

When birds flying over find no place to rest in dead branches.

When the streams dry up and leave dusty furrows
like the cheeks of an old woman who leans
against the bark of a dead tree.

When the deer look at the mountain and turn away.

When the men shoulder their chainsaws and leave the silent mill
and the streets of the town are voiceless, the shuttered school on the hill
smells of dust, not chalk dust and not sawdust, just dust.

Just a breath away from a forest
measured by the breathing of mountains.

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside