​An Old Fir Blanket

 

 

I took his skin, flayed from the carbohydrates we would use​

for our own needs, our own creature comforts;
the limbs we would burn to heat our home this winter. 
His skin, roughened and wrinkled with age and weather, 
which served as protection from fire
and shelter for the insects which nourished the birds.

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This splintery old bark,
peeling from the bodies that were salvaged slash from a clear-cut.
Each round we burned reduced, by a tiny bit,
the habitat for the birds and seedlings.

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I took the gnarled and rusted skidder rope, the weapon
used by the logging operation that clear-cut this DNR land,
the discarded steel shattering into splinters
that promised poisonous puncture wounds.

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With gratitude and with anger, I took these, and composed a sanctuary. 

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The vestiges of poignant choices.
Whose home needs these dead trees more desperately:
mine, or the creatures who dwell in that
which was once

a forest?