Last Tree

#dversepoets pub 1 Minute

Hello dverse poets this is one of my first poems written after listerning to “big yellow taxi by Joni Mitchell one evening a number of years ago. I am having a thin out of some of my least popular poems this evening and realised i had not promoted this at all so thought open link night might be the right place for it.

#dverse, #globalwarming

https://dversepoets.com/2021/09/02/openlinknight-299/
last tree standing

Alone I stand my feet in the earth,

Head held high, even inn the fog of man,

Metal beasts wanting to tear at my core,

their breath burning man’s lungs, the lungs I could help.

My lifelong friends long since felled,

Replaced by more asphalt beds,

For your oil eating, carbon decanting beasts of burden, 

Built as salves, to the dark destroyers,

Here at last is our ending,

Here comes the ripper of friends,

To tear me branch from trunk,

Till you have no more of my kind.

To many vapour trails look down,

from the dirty grey,

 that was once the clear blue,

that my friends kept blue,

As I lay here to die torn apart,

Leaf from twig, twig from branch,

 Branch from trunk, trunk from root

GOODBYE.

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Published by rog

run run run down the rabbit hole of perspective we most go

Published

17 thoughts on “Last Tree”

  2. My father, a farmer descended from a long line of men of the soil, used to shake his head when he visited me in the city and comment with sadness “one day the farms will all be covered in asphalt”.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Every tree felled is another (wooden) nail in our coffins. If humans think we can live without our external lungs they are deluded. Blunt and gut-wrenching wordsmithing, Rog.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Oh, this tears at the heart!

    ‘For your oil eating, carbon decanting beasts of burden’

    What won’t we sacrifice? How can anyone watch all of the fires and floods and remain in denial?

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Even here, misguided farmers want to cut down the trees that form the windbreaks, the essential part of errosion control my father espoused but his decendents don’t care because it’s so easy then to steer your big yellow taxi (I mean tractor!) from field to field. Thanks for the post.

    Liked by 1 person

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