Ellen Maas is a voice in and for the wilderness. She is a member of  Somerville’s Bagel Bards, and is well-known for her ecological activism in our community.

 

 

Death of A Forest

 

Sleep fails as my brain begs the blade to stop,

continues deafening into heartwood,

slicing cortex winter coat that covered me from freeze

 

Merciless saw

cuts through my cambrian layers of evolution

that healed  diseased wounds,

carried water to my thirsty branches.

 

 

Killers sever my silver maple veins.

 

I bleed sap and resin with resignation,

 

 

Steadfast sapwood system of vascular circuitry

flowed constant, leaf nutrients in transport

finger limbs to roots,

sun permeates the forest, brilliant nurturer for eons.

 

None discoverd my synthesis secret

carried through from molecular creation

by magical mother.

 

The grinding saw penetrates ploem neath

protective green layers

shielded me from harm, once,

fueled a vascular system

of sugar food, I make

 

Miracle sap layer

stood me upright for a 100 years.

My corps nourished farms, animals, bird homes,

scattering  verdant morsels for every season.

 

.

Carbon sequester is non-stop microbial work.

Long roots stem erosion, flood waters by

great earth-tree symbiosis-

flows through my soil via delicate hair,

 

far up to crown for secret ritual.

I respire for life all around.

 

Dancing daily, will

touch a blue cosmos

to live beyond millennium and all brutality

 

Woodland kin, we suspected nothing wrong.

“Tree language”, you said,

“Is harmony with community –beyond which,

we silver maples cannot go.”

I honor the oath.

 

 

Killer revs a steel arm again,

severing my  pith center.  Next,

wrenching,torn trunks collapse by hundreds,

reeling, canopy pounds the ground, breaks,

broken bones like lightning crack,

roots ripped away-  grubbed deep into

screaming biotic earth.

 

 

We fell in great numbers that October day,

choked nature spirits

buried deep,

final dishonor.

 

 

Without emerald countenance,

all barren,

no natural weapons left to stymie the flood of greed-

predation flowing in my fair city

among the refuse of human decay,

 

drifting apart from our life source.

 

Cry shame as loss covers my earth.

For generations to come must find this tree world

to hang any planet dream.

 

Today Solstice

light begins in north hemisphere,

glowing nature’s inextinguishable memory of dead silver maples.

— Ellen Mass

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