Private Dialogue

Originally posted on Poesy plus Polemics:

“Woman Looking in a Mirror”
Painting by Richard Edward Miller
From encore-editions.com

burn the green wood

kill the young

nascent saplings

emergent from

rich loamy wombs

before time

(so you tell yourself)

ever feels pain

before trauma to

rootstock of memory

call it humane

this cold intervention

supposing that forests

when left to their

natural development

suffer from

certain privations

too many grown trees

who compete for

too little fresh air

in a landscape

too wanting of

less oppressed

access to sun

you have choice

(so you tell yourself)

free to decide

and what heart

would choose suffering

knowing the world

gets along

(so you tell yourself)

hardly diminished

and never to miss

a mere few

generations

of trees