They brought in a big saw
and clean and quick
in a single slice
down fell the first old pine
then one after another until
the sacred grove gave way
to polypropylene turf
Of course my family mourned
my daughter who did her chi gong
grounding herself among the pines
then stretching to join its branches
and my grandson pausing
in his hot race for a moment
of connection
So many spirits displaced
I think of Ohio
where I live and how
only two hundred years ago
the Seneca lost their virgin forests
to the shipping industry
as two men with a saw did the job
on thousands of acres
and visitors complained
of the paucity of the diet
nothing but squash and pumpkins
could sprawl over the stumps
as Charles Dickens witnessed from his train
chugging mile after mile
through a flat decapitation
of a stump-punctuated landscape
Still you have to wonder
about the spirits
whether they sank
among the felled trees
or found some refuge
in the passing clouds
or if like me
living eighty years south of Lake Erie
they witnessed how rotted stumps
yielded to wheat fields and apple orchards
to highways and strip malls
to houses on cul-de-sacs with pools and shrubbery
Yet here I am
on my old farm
crawling among
tangled vines
over the remnants of the first devastation
still fastened to the earth
and attached to small fruits
as morning and evening skies
stretch above me beckoning
—
Pauline Thornton lives on the remaining thirty acres of an old farm between Kent and Ravenna—a place that continues to inform her identity and work: indoor (cooking and poetry) and outdoor (gardening and property maintenance). She is a retired teacher of literature and creative writing.
