Don't Drink Bees

Pine needles tickling the air, reaching out on a breeze and touching a face. Blindly groping.

- Who are you wandering about on my homeland, in my family grove? Welcome. Hushed whispers. What is it? I feel you tread upon my branches, lightly. I have no eyes in my needles. I sense your presence and your mission and wish to discourage you. Long to shake myself free of you. I need no more to worry about. Be gone, bird! Do not relieve yourself on my fine evergreen coat. I have just bathed in the rain, dried in the sun. Please, wind, come aid me. I haven't the strength to drive her away. I need you to break me free. Freedom - how I long for it. I am but a tree, tied to this plot of soil, unable to move by will, only by a pattern set down long ago.

I reached for the light. I grew tall and spindly in this dim, dense wood. Oh! How I longed to grow faster and taller and reach those rays I saw glancing about above my head. And absorb them. If I had, I would have exposed myself to weathering. Heavy burdens of snow. Slapped about by the winter wind, broken by my own folly of wanting to grow taller and be alone above it all.

But I was born to move upward. I was seasoned to bear the weather. But you, human, I know you're there. You've set before me a life you wouldn't want for yourself. I will live through the centuries - generations of you. My air will thin. My needles will turn red, brown, and fall dead. You’ve altered the ozone. My sap will boil and foam. Syrup will abound straight from my being; then I will die.

Cut me down with a jagged saw - now. Slice my life away with a sharp, steel axe. Bleed me slowly with nails and barbed wire. Build upon my roots and squash my life from me. Break me piece by piece as my growing interferes with your progress - streets and telephone wires. I'm sorry I was not born a pole. Pile waste upon my ancestors. Feed my offspring poisoned rivers. Cover us with aerosol spray. We are not preserved Christmas wreaths. We are living - or were. You wonder why I hold out my branches and tear at your flesh as you journey through the wood. It is to say "This is mine" - my family's home, and it shall be until you kill us all one by one - which you will do.

How would it be if I did to YOUR family what you are doing to us? Would you laugh and playfully yell "Timber!" as your child was decapitated or de-legged? You kill us, and you all will die. You need to breathe. We give you oxygen. We give you life. Take ours. Here, I will help you. You say my roots are in odd configurations. Take a picture. Create more plastic waste. You record my stance, my roots wrapped about my trunk, choking my life from me. I'll fall. Someone will ask, "Who killed this tree?"

Alone in no forest with condos to see, I fell, and no one heard.

If you fell in the smog and no one could see you, would you make a sound?