John Bennett # 23 Tombstone

‘hearing oftentimes / The still sad music of humanity.’    Early this morning, Friday

Memorials are scattered through the forest

but due north, clear-felling has devastated,

leaving nothing - we forget  trees die like us

but discovered creation long before we did.

This stump was once a mountain of wood

an enchantment, tall and wide and old

breathing before the invasion. 

I imagine it feeling pleasure from a sunny

spring day, or a summer storm

even though it never had a name.

Trees have talent - a tree is not a tree

but a small universe, habitat, larder, lookout,

By day, birds sang melodies from its branches,

at night it kept patience with Gliders

Cicadas and Flying Foxes.

Flowering in its season for the nectar seekers

strewing gumnuts  on the ground, a dependable mystery

rooted the foundations of life, conversing

with other roots and other life forms,

the web of interconnections buried.

This stump reveals power relations

and the potency of steel, labour, enterprise,

but the branches airdanced in a southerly

and the sun trod on its leaves. Now,

pale bone is eaten out, reflecting light

for a selfish art that skirts the shadows.

 

The ruins have become picturesque,

like Tintern Abbey without the stones,

the architecture and without God.

Today is an awful black day for NSW. Despite letters and phone calls from us in the conservation community, the Baird government's controversial biodiversity laws passed last night, with farmers getting greater powers to clear their land of native vegetation. Hugh Possingham who resigned from the biodiversity legislation review panel warned that broadscale clearing could double in NSW as a result of the changes.

Meanwhile, this morning's birds are feeding