Elegy for the Honey Run Trees
After the furious crackling and sap-screams
as wildfire took all in its path, their songs went
silent. Voices choked with ash. Bent
snarls like black bones replaced the high-C of green.
I’d recite each name as if fingering prayer beads,
but the mala string is long: fifty-nine trees lost
by the adjuster’s count. The estimated cost
did not include gray pines, wild plums that seed
themselves, or native oaks—blue and black
and live and scrub. We’d been warned not to plant
within a hundred feet of the dwelling, but it can’t
be claimed the silver maple shading the back
deck destroyed our home. It was the other way
around—white birch, blue spruce, yellow pine,
tulip magnolia, lilac, redbud all caught in the line
of the burning house. No space was defensible the day
the blaze tornedoed down the canyon. So much was lost
when they died. Do trees have souls?
In the face of devastation what consoles?
I returned in spring, when the frost
of shock was thawing, to lop burnt sticks
from three young redwoods and found fresh sprigs
furring their slender trunks, green twigs
that would become lacy boughs. The quick
underground was still thriving. A sequoia, too,
whose roots had spent sixteen years
scratching through hardpan, appears
to be coming back. Life muddles through.
The oldest trees have fire etched in their rings.
Beneath the char and boneyard exuberance sings.
Joanne Allred is the author of three poetry collections: Particulate (Bear Star Press), The Evolutionary Purpose of Heartbreak (Turning Point), and Outside Paradise (Word Poetry). Read more.