They cling to flat horizons
only to be bent and wizened
by the north wind’s blast
that steams in from the coast.
It sculpts them into humps and twists
that loom from drifting sea mists
as giants, witches and hobgoblins,
wild animals and dragons.
Here and there they come together,
huddling against the weather,
hedgerows, small woods, copses
and swathes of ancient forest.
Trees command the landscape,
broad-leaved warriors that escaped
the Bronze Age deforestation,
once providing food and habitation
for villages and hamlets
spreading at their roots,
now exhaling oxygen to reset
this disintegrating planet.
Kim M. Russell, 22nd March 2021
My response to earthweal weekly challenge: Deforestation (Last Stand at Fairy Creek) on World Poetry Day
Sherry is back this Monday with an essay about Fairy Creek, a forest near to where she lives, ‘some of the very last of the old growth left on Vancouver Island’ that also happens to be unceded Pacheedaht territory, and photographs to show what is happening to beautiful, ancient trees.
Sherry describes what is happening as ‘‘talk and log’ with government, while the logging companies decimate, not just trees, but ecosystems, water systems, habitat for wildlife, the biodiversity necessary for health and survival of all species. Including us. While scientists and conservationists frantically search for technological responses to the climate crisis, they are cutting down the best absorbers of carbon on the planet: trees.’
Sherry has plenty of personal experience of blockading this kind of logging, whereas I have, thankfully, never experienced any large-scale clearing of woodlands or forest where I live. I’m heartbroken whenever our willow has to be pruned away from the overhead power cables that cross our garden and can’t imagine that kind of decimation.
writing in north norfolk 
So beautiful!
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Thank you very much, Lucy!
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What a fantastically gnarly poem!
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Thank you, Misky! We have so many gnarly trees, especially along the coast roads. Even the trees in our garden are gnarly!
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A beautiful poem. We have those wind-bent scraggly old ones too, on the dunes beside the sea. It is wonderful to think that your Norfolk guardians escaped earlier deforestation. They will have to work extra hard storing carbon, with so many big trees gone across the globe. I feel the same as you when there is even pruning of trees. It is terrible to watch whole forests fall. Heartbreaking.
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We are very lucky with our forests in the UK, and with the laws protecting ancient trees.
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I’m glad you brought to light how trees nourish our air. They are natural purifiers 😊
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Thank you, Patti! 🙂
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Great poem. We do need all the trees across the planet to replenish our impoverished atmosphere.
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Thank you, Suzanne. I couldn’t live in a place where there were few or no trees.
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Such trees — mighty, twisted, windblown relics fighting for the planet.
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I could just imagine those wizened, hobgoblin-shaped forms as you described them Kim. Long may the trees of Norfolk stand!
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So well done, and an important cause to raise awareness, no matter where we live!
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Thank you, Tiffany!
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What beautiful picture you have painted in my mind.
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Thank you kindly.
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You are welcome 🙂
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😊
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