Trees provide beauty, shade, fresh air, habitat for birds and animals, ambiance, sequester carbon and help fight climate change, plus provide chemicals that we inhale that have a calming influence.
Now, when we need them the most, trees are being treated as disposable assets without any consideration for the value they provide standing.
This poem was written in despair at the ignorance that seems to be sweeping through our once lush garden city. Future generations will have no memory of where trees and forests once stood if we don’t speak up now. I urge you to call, write or email your elected municipal and local park officials to tell them of your concerns. It does make a difference. I know first-hand, but it does require action.
A Tree Poem for You and Me by Frances Litman
Another tree down. “So What!” you say?
Each tree home to 10,000 living things, including birds and bees. Does no one see?
The tree experts with their growing fleets of new trucks, take down another tree for the quick bucks.
Stumps abound where beauty once stood. Paving the way for more gray.
Clean sight-lines to corporate box stores. Another forest cut down for a storage-town. Lockers filled to the brim with stuff no longer needed but worth more than the life-giving, healthy eco-system that once stood next door.
Disease is on the rise, which is no surprise, especially when profits matter more than a clean sea-shore or the health of so much more.
Governments with too much power look down from their ivory towers.
Does no one see? Does no one see?
Our natural heritage a symbol of international pride with no foresight given by a government with much to hide.
Strip mining, pipelines, roads and more roads, wider roads, overpasses to no where. Paving over paradise. Paving and more paving… majestic oaks, rare arbutus, mossy maples, fantastic firs and elegant elms ripped down for the crown.
Another tree down. “So What!”, you say? Pay it forward, play it forward…the price is high as we kiss this earth goodbye!
Our shared heritage is found in each tree… home to more than just bees.
Silent heroes who work non-stop, replacing invisible growing airborne toxins from their tree tops. As we idle by, spewing carbon all around us and into the sky.
Trees lost in their prime by chainsaw cowboys with their eye on the dime. Gone for good in a slash and a stroke… hundreds of years of history, of life giving oxygen, food, shelter and the rest is no longer a mystery. When we need them the most! When we need them the most!
Does no one see? Does no one see?