Tree Planting Poems

May 12, 2006

This night was cold, and all were fed.

Some stayed a while; words were said.

Games were played, and needles’ thread.

I retired, as tired my head.

And ought to a scene of quiet instead.

Inside my space all sound was dead,

Candles a lite aside my bed.

And into a dream where my mind had led.

May 13, 2006

Three deer hung by while we planted trees,

My bare shoulders were laps for the orangest of bees.

We worked under a sun; turning skin gold.

Warmth, swallowed by wind, had left us cold.

Fifty heads down, always watching the ground,

Under a true blue dream with clouds to surround.

I thought of you, as I do each day,

Missing the lightness of words that you say.

Sad and lost, then happy and gay,

Kinds for themes take my minds away.

May 14, 2006

We spoke of theorum, and ideas, and all the rest.

Of Hulk Hogan, and music; the discovery test.

We spoke of life and what it means to die,

We spoke under light of expanding sky.

 

We spoke of pocket books and cigarettes,

We spoke of love, and lost dream regrets.

We talked of what bad karma begets,

Into which no innocence lets.

 

We shared our thoughts and passion for truth,

He propped the sign, I stood by the booth.

Words were gave, and heard each one,

We talked by the heat of a risen sun.

 

Never too soon to ask who we are,

Or why we came to choose this star.

Come and exchange your thought with mine,

We spoke of life, and the patience of time.

 

May 23rd, 2006

With Heavy feet of mud coated sole,

The last of their heat; the wind-rain stole.

Equipped to endure for the length of a day,

Equipped to keep within control.

 

Numbness of thumbs, nails, paws a sliver,

With every shock, nerves twitch and quivver.

Clammed and cold; rain soaked glove,

The hands are where we begin to shivver.

 

Our legs are engines, driven to top.

They only advance, step by foot drop.

Conditioned with blood; secured by bone,

You know they won’t stop; don’t ever stop.

 

Buried deep is the planter’s mind,

Deep as a forest; in them the find.

Nature then wages a day for a fight,

They who stayed, stood, but one of a kind.

 

May 24th, 2006

By the light of a cloudy dawn did our march slowly begin. It takes a margin of length for one’s body to gain up the heat to breathe comfortably in a morning without a visible sun. There was a settlement of Western Alberta fog which took great advantage of the opportunity to obscure the visibility for our two pilots.

Mike, who was our Austrian pilot – and reminded me of a father of a close freind of mine – took to an un-expected jovial charisma about the muster of our cold, but eager company. Having no gentle compass, four unexperienced crew members took it upon their initiative, and upon Mike’s suggestion, to treck their way through acres of un-guided, forested land without the comfort of a map or the security of a radio. Their instincts must have appealed to them as sufficient to provide confidence while traversing hectares of terrain normally passed highly above by the seat of a transport helicopter.  Mike’s suggestion, which was to travel South-East along cut seismic lines, unfortunately wasn’t enough advice to ensure a straight path for these four naiive planters.

The rest of our crew clamped to the lead of our foreman, well informed. The walk was through the remnants of the scattered, and abandoned seismic paths previously utilized by oil drilling companies. The paths had been thoroughly drowned under water due to the topographic characteristics of the land which conveniently settled between two cloud converging mountain ranges. I gave thanks for my rubber boots.

Our bodies marched, each supported by the near identicle architectural frame of the delicate human skeleton. Our walk took forever, though thirty minutes had passed before we reached our destination.

The other four were not found until five hours later when the fog had cleared entirely. Once they tardedly arrived to a familiar and convenient cache co-ordinate, the four called in their safe and secure cries over the cache radio. I had with me a radio which reassuredly informed me of the good news. The shaking of their voices still rings harmonic presence in my mind, and will forever remind me of my own personal fragility.