Savior Rainforest
My wings awide,
I soar over the green ocean
feeling strong exhalations
of holy carbon, forced
from God’s great rainforest.
Below, an immense
wilderness, woven with
ribbons of blue, ribbons
lacing the vast forest together,
a forest which has sung
songs of plenitude from
the beginning of Her
Creations, but now screeches
unmelodic strains of
painful loss, from
the logging, the burning:
for more, more, more.
I fly even higher,
my feathers scorched
by flames of my own
indulgence.
How high must I fly?
Saying Goodbye to My Oak
Over 400 species of oak!
My Oak takes me to visit them.
My Oak says, “you can see these
oaks as the charcoal in your drawing
or in a warming fire, so they
may stand no more in
the forest.”
He fears that
the “tree of life”, with us
for fifty-six million years
is slowly saying goodbye.
My Oak says, “Did you know
that 32 species are
critically endangered?
Lands are cleared for
farms and cattle.”
(Fewer McDonalds,
please.)
Is there a doctor in the house?
My Oak tells me, “plant diseases
are killing my friends.”
(I run for a bandaid.)
“Mosses, fungi, lichen
and mammals love little
homes around me,”
says My Oak, “so even I
don’t want to say goodbye.”
Writer’s Statement – The two poems here, Savior Rainforest, and Saying Goodbye to My Oak, reflect my torn feelings of loving the land and forests God gave us for our benefit, but realizing they are in great danger, this mainly from human use. Humans crave meat and more land for farmland to feed meat-animals. It is a serious dilemma which is difficult to solve when the whole world is at fault and some cultures are not ready to change their habits and practices. Monetary profit is an enemy too. Hopefully these few words of the poems shed some light on the painful conflict. The poem, Saying Good by to My Oak, reflects my deep love of the woods, and especially the giant oak trees which are truly being threatened now from several sources.
BIO: Marilyn Peretti has been writing and publishing poetry since 1992. She is a member of several local poetry groups and has attended workshops in the area, as well as Ghost Ranch, NM; Galway, Ireland; and U. of Iowa Summer Writers Festival. Nominated for the Pushcart Poetry Prize she has published several small books, the most recent being, Behind the Mask in 2020. . . 2021. . ., all pandemic lockdown poems, published at Blurb.com.