a plague of unpredictability
the forest just above the cabin used to be dependable,
predictable, change came in small regular steps,
like the markings on the wall measuring a growing child's height,
saplings grow up fast, mature trees slowly,
before, paths had a constancy about them,
barring the occasional wind-felled tree,
it used to be easy to walk along the pathless creek,
along what our old friend, Mayfield Carr,
called the "Fishermen's Trail,"
then the Beech Grove showed its age,
no longer a calm secure place
where a wedding could be held, and was,
several beeches toppled, and sadly the greatest beech,
long-suffering from a wound at its base,
fell down the valley within a ferocious wind,
even worse, the hemlocks succumbed to an adelgid,
an insect whose hunger, like all of ours,
knows no limits, save those forced upon it,
so it ate, and ate, and Hemlock Hollow disappeared,
today I make my way up along the creek
and great trunks of downed hemlock block the way,
dead before their time,
at least "their time" as seems normal to me,
I think of the 1918 influenza epidemic
which savaged these hollows,
too many tombstones from that time,
I've talked to those who remember
when whole families were laid low,
seven years ago a Great Fire roared through this valley,
weakened trees still topple from that great hurt,
I find it easier to forgive a voracious insect
than my fellow humans who will not see
how our greed and self-absorption fuels deadly climate change.
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