Poem: "Branches and Actions"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem came out of the September 4, 2012 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired by the_vulture.  It has been sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette. 

Read about problems caused by clearcutting.  Explore the morality of tree spiking.  Understand how conservation creates jobs.

Branches and Actions

Choices branch out from each moment
like the twigs of a tree reaching toward the sky.
There are always options, alternatives
other things that might be done.

There is nothing wrong with harvesting trees
so long as the forest survives;
but level the forest and soon there will be
neither trees nor logging jobs.

Sabotage is the fine art of knowing
where to insert a monkeywrench into a system
without getting anyone hurt in the process.
It is safer to steal the chains from the saws
or pour sugar into the gas tanks of the bulldozers
than to pound spikes into tree trunks.

Begin, then, with the least damaging option --
but if the forests are going, going,
then start spiking trees before all of them are gone.

This is the most basic rule of self-preservation:
Don't saw off the branch you're standing on.
You must understand how your actions
will affect the future as time forks and unfurls.

The economy is not in competition with the environment.
The economy exists within  the environment;
without a healthy environment, there can be  no economy.
The economy is made of numbers, but so too
are the infinite fractal branches of the trees.