Stormgrove

Before. Before your ignorance we stood tall. Before. Before you, we were the amused. The horned beetles slowly multiplying, speckled resting doe, the golden autumn Cantharellus, the wild swine lumbering toward the ponds edge, all so enchanting. Before you. The swaggering moose, drunk from fermented apples found respite here, with owl, wolf, fox, hare, even the very smallest cells of life found refuge in our bows. Yet you pushed on. Our youngest branches, our eldest and wise were stolen from our families, broken, savagely contorted into what you wanted; was it needed? A shelter from the storm we gave you; the sky dark, yet brilliant with constellations that brought us joy, threatened you. How? Our children were your protection from the winds off the sea, the frigid, unforgiving cold; yet we believed. We believed because all who face decimation must. We are ringed in our matter, our full restitution embedded. We did not erase our homecoming! We mourned our trust lost, or could it be, we saw you as one, in the natural order of existence and you failed to hear us?

Our forest began to talk, in whispers long ago; our soft pleas evolved as the Universe saw you pleading on your selfish knees for salvation. We gave you food, shade from the sun burning your thirsty mouths, dew to moisten your lips and saplings to feed your horses. You took. You took before. We stood tall. With axes you raided our groves, our ancestors perished for your comfort. The ones who remained solemn did so to bestow the sprouts of our likeness strength. They were wobbly, just as the new-born calf, wet and safe on our mossy, carpeted floor. The winds were and will always be our lullabies, sweeping through those of us remaining, hampering the gusts, and taming our young to thrive. The calf stands as a mother moose nudges and licks her likeness clean; the calf nurses, we all lean in to coddle are newest member. Our likeness, takes longer than this new life yet eagerly stretches out, upwards toward the sun, lanky, wanting, giving without knowing.

Fox felt it first; perhaps it is his shady trust in humans. He came to the elders in haste; with their sagacious ways they heard him, lowering there limbs to comfort him. They knew, for they had lived for centuries knowing that fox may not survive, nor the unspoilt calf, the deer, and all the cherished ones unable to burrow or fly would likely perish. In whispers, like sonnets to long lost lovers, they made their peace. They decided to tell the saplings what TRUTH they'd witnessed as this is what their predators had always done in the silence of the woods. When there was no hope, no reason, no way to restore, much less survive till spring, when the snow was so deep they could not kill, forage or go on, the humans would tell their likenesses in false tones, "It will be okay; spring shall come". The babes cried underneath the drooping icy laden branches and the woods whispered their inevitable intuition. Not in rhyme, fable or sweet endings. Nature is real, harsh, always in charge.

"All will be as it should be; the young will die if the old do not survive. These fragile creatures have been both nurtured and feared. Those on four legs have chance to run with all their might to safety. Yet like the saplings whose roots were firmly settled next to their Mother tree, these parasitic inhabitants have also planted themselves in these woods, using our family to create shelter."

All that they took, all that we gave, could not save them. The winds grew ashy and smouldering, the whispers became screams; all that was flew in orange embers toward the starlit heavens. In many dawns the angry flames were broken by tears from the fallen clouds.

Spring came, as the Universe assured, and as always the woods had whispered in their forever echoes, carved deep within the rings of TRUTH of every single tree, "Before your ignorance we stood tall". Some saplings, like the careless two legged creatures had perished; yet life continued, the insects buzzed and crept, the leaves burst in fullness with joy, the birds chirped, critters united and the woods once again whistled in tune with life.