I Will Shed No Tear for the Trees

I will shed no tear

for the tree reduced to ash.

It will be mourned enough

by mouths that do not truly care

Instead,

I shall squander paper

with extravagant hands,

filling its pale remains

with these very lines

a second felling,

performed in ink.

The climate will warm.

The pages will yellow.

The words themselves

will one day burn.

And I will rehearse

the familiar liturgy:

"Save the trees."

"Tell everyone."

"There is still time."

Yet warnings,

like smoke,

are easiest to admire

from a distance.

Then,

My breath will leave me,

though not

at the touch of a lover,

but from forests

transitioned into cinder

their green grammar

erased from the earth,

their oxygen

those invisible hymns

ascending

like prayers

to a heaven

Unable to be breathed back

Only then

will I permit myself

a single tear.

Not for the timber.

Not for the paper.

But for every unnoticed mercy:

the republic of shade,

the slow applause of leaves,

the cool dialect of wind,

and the generosity

of a tree

that spent its whole life

becoming

someone else's breath.