The Loggers
move from tree to
tree in the thrill of fel-
ling, feeling the sky in-
side their eyes as the
canopies open onto
forever and the blue blue
hue of heaven croons
a song called “nothing”
called “everything” as the
chorus of foliage soughs a-
long beneath the noise of
Brobdignagian saws at
the necks of oaks, pines,
palmitos, kapoks, bao-
bubs, ashes, palms, ipe,
teaks, redwoods, lo-
custs, walnuts, mahog-
anies, birches, hick-
ories, beeches, cedars,
spruces, hemlocks, cher-
ries, and firs for a rea-
son they can’t explain oth-
er than to say, “We’re fol-
lowing a longing to
raze the trees we love and
because they’re there is
all with a cost we can’t re-
sist to tear the sky and al-
so—dare we say the supra-
lapsarian saw?—"be-
cause we can,” which
sounds depraved, we
know, but echoes as a
call that lures us into the
oldest groves where the
hermit thrush incants a
song that grows as an aur-
al seed inside the ear in-
side our ears: “oh holy hol-
y, ah, purity purity eeh,
sweetly sweetly” and the
chickadee’s stutter up-
braids in vain: “There’s some-
thing deeply wrong be-
neath that has swelled to
a progress that is no
less than the clear-
cut forests that are void
of any Hawthorne ef-
fect which might have dis-
abused you of the fact that
a tree amounts to on-
ly a stick on the scale of
your hearts when you’ve
felled so many you have no
notion of the loss you’ve
wrought because you’ve
thought from the start that
the genius of saws, skid-
ders, splitters, and trucks
permitted you license to
“do as you wish” which
you have, in fact, be-
cause it’s your job—fel-
ling trees in heaven’s the-
ater—and the industry de-
mands it and you’re good
at it Goddamit and it’s thril-
lling besides to watch
them fall so slowly a-
cross the sky and onto
the ground where they
shake the Earth itself like
a word that’s holy if cursed
and because the mus-
ic of cracks, crashes, and
thuds has drugged your
blood with a thirst to
drink the sky with your al-
ready loaded eyes in the
din of Husqvarnas, Poul-
ans, Stihls, and Tigercats.”
Chard deNiord is the former poet laureate of Vermont and author of seven books of poetry. Read more.
“The Loggers” was previously published in The Progressive.