The Tongues of Falling Trees

 

The Hanging Garden Tree
on Meares Island, Tofino

I have a very special poem to share with you this week. It gave me the idea for this week's prompt. It was written by Vancouver's Poet Laureate, Fiona Tinwei Lam . Her book of poems, titled Odes and Laments, is available at Caitlin Press.  

THE TREES HAVE NO TONGUES
by Fiona Tinwei Lam (Used with permission.)

Yet they sough and sigh as they sway,
receiving sunlight, open-palmed,
or creak and moan in winter blasts.
Dawn to dusk, biophonic chorales
held within and between upheld limbs –
trills, pecks, caws, thrums, hoots.

Within each trunk, clicks, pops and crackles
as tiny embolisms of air break
tension, tensile rivers coursing
in ultrasonic song up
through xylem
to bough, branch, twig,

while below the forest floor,
lacing roots entwine
in a wood-wide web of questing
dendrites enmeshed in fungi
to commune with kin,
nurse saplings, nourish the ailing,
or plot and warn as they record

each marauding. The forest
suspends its breath with every felled
giant. Roar of uprooted centuries,
wrenching of earthlimb from earthflesh.
Who will hear?
As the world smoulders,
let each poem be
a fallen tree’s tongue.

How my heart leapt at this idea - that, in our poems, we can be the voice of falling trees, can speak their fear and pain, and also their beauty and life-giving properties. Our poems can be voices for the many beyond-human beings who share this planet with us, and suffer so terribly because of our encroachment, and their loss of habitat, as trees fall to clearcutting and development, accelerating the climate crisis. 

All last summer, wildfires burned all across Canada. The whole of the North West Territories was on fire. Evacuating populations was a logistical nightmare. Watching Maui burn was shocking. Tree loss is contributing to a rapidly heating planet,  warming seas, and melting poles. Mature trees are the best storers of carbon emissions on the planet. It is unfathomable to me that clearcutting the last of the old growth is still happening, when trees are needed as never before to cool Mother Earth.

In our poems this week, let's speak for the trees.

• There might be a forest you love to walk through.
• You may have a relationship with one special tree that you watch through the seasons.
• You might wish to address the impact of  tree loss on the forests near you.
• Or you might want to write about all that trees give us: beauty, peace and the very breath in our bodies.           

Here is Mary Oliver, on the topic of trees:

WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES
by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees
especially the willows and the honey locust
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines
they give off such hints of gladness
I would almost say that they save me, and daily
I am so distant from the hope of myself
in which I have goodness, and discernment
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, ‘Stay awhile.’
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, ‘It’s simple,’ they say
‘and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.’

 ***

After you link your poem, please visit other poets in the spirit of community. I am looking forward to reading your poems, speaking for - or to - the trees.