Poem: Tree-lopping

They did it pat, like some old-remembered rhyme,

The lopping of the trees;

I heard them cry out- I, I heard them cry out in pain,

The tortured trees under the executioner’s axe;

They had stood there before I was born,

Since when this town was young;

They had flourished then,

And flowered and budded and shaded me

With the shade of their over-spreading love;

So they lopped them, the trees I loved

Like my father, like my mother they had loved me,

When I had been green, in my youth,

And their quiet solace had been like a lullaby,

Until that cold and remorseless day when someone decided

It was time for me to grow up.

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from A Sad Piper 1994