During the hurricane of 1999 • Gray Dogwood • and then again in 2012, • Northern Bayberry • trees fell. • American Chestnut • Some crashed in a manner so violent, • Mountain Laurel • they uprooted, • Nanny-Berry • exposing root systems. • Paper Birch • Entire trees from canopy to root overtook landscapes. • Sycamore Maple • Some of the old ones, many stories high, • Wild Hydrangea • succumbed. • Black Ash • Gravity pulled the trees • Stag-Horn Sumac • onto houses and cars, blocking roads, cutting power lines. • Border Privet • Arborists and government workers removed the fallen trees. • Red Elder • Scientists said the trees fell due to high winds and the heavy weight of insistent torrential rain. • Autumn-Olive • Forests thinned. • Quaking Aspen • Street traffic became louder: our arboreal sound barriers had been diminished. • Sweetgale • With fewer woods, people began seeing more deer, • Black Walnut • squirrels, • Silver Maple • chipmunks, • Quaking Aspen • raccoons, • Pussy Willow • bears, • Linden Arrow-Wood • coyotes, • Mountain Maple • and more birds • Sweet-Fern • in their backyards. • Sourwood • Wildlife had been displaced. • Choke Cherry • Many home- and business-owners and government officials decided to cut down trees prophylactically, • Great-Laurel • in case there was another hurricane or bad storm. • Quaking Aspen • At first, the stumps were barely noticeable. • Sassafras • A few here and there. • Crack Willow • But now there are more— it is a county of stumps. • Osage-Orange • The smell of their wood and vascular systems drift through my open windows. • Cucumber-Tree • The light has changed because the trees have been thinned. • Honey-Locust • Sunlight is brighter, less corrugated. • Silktree • It is hard to know what has or will become of the mosses, • Russian-Olive • fungi, • Fire Cherry • crawling vines, • Flowering Dogwood • and the underground life. • River Birch • I look down as I walk— • Sweet-Gum • at pine needles, • Groundseltree • clover, • Highbush-Cranberry • and grasses, and ask, What is gone? • Basswood • What have we taken? • Tree-of-Heaven
—
H.E. Fisher (she/they) is the author of the collection Sterile Field (Free Lines Press, 2022) and chapbook Jane Almost Always Smiles (Moonstone Arts Center Press, 2022). H.E.’s poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Psaltery & Lyre, and Whale Road Review, among other publications. H.E. was awarded City College of New York’s 2019 Stark Poetry Prize and has received nominations for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize.
