Lament for a Tree Surgeon
..
I dip my heart in elegy and write,
A pen held firmly by the hand of grief.
Encyclopedic is the size and height
Of this my undertaking. Turn a leaf
Of it forever and my sorrow will
Have just begun. A hundred trillion trees
Can fall to make the paper — and until
The pages have been filled with ink from seas
As wide as galaxies my goal will not
Have yet been seriously endeavored. Rhymes
Of eulogy can flow unending, fraught
With splintered ache—but they are not for times:
Necessity requires eternal breath
To sing the felling in that loss, your death.