April Poetry | Sadie Bailey

In recognition of Poetry Month, and to celebrate and highlight our treasure trove of Orcas Island poets, Orcas Issues is pleased and honored to again offer daily poetry during April.

March Lament, Eastsound

— Sadie Bailey —

(a response to watching bulldozers and backhoes destroy trees in various areas in and around Eastsound)

Rain lashes the windows again, sky broods
perfect shades of grey to match this mood –
not longing for glare of droughty July days,
nor wishing rain away – but hoping it will stay.

Ground’s saturated, can hold no more wet,
squishes under my boots – too soggy yet for shoes;
still, owls hoot under night’s black canopy. Moon,
tides, still course their steady paths, rain or shine.

If you need to cry while the sun blinds bright – if you
show sadness; an act deemed traitorous in this society
made of plasma screens spouting conspiracies,
touting gun violence and antidepressants –

rain’s always a relief; washes away strained smiles,
cheery banal small-talk about nothing, while
bulldozers savage living trees, to make room
for more transient housing and Air B & Bs

This landscape of my thoughts is fraught with sad mines.
My soul and body need to walk outside, let gentle rain
wipe away flasback of splintered pines, ease the pain
of losing more woods to profiteers again.

It’s hard to avoid eroded lands devoid of all that lived in trees
when they were whole, majestic, filled with birds and breeze.
Where will hummingbirds and bats who lived there go?
Where is some living shade? Why so many mosquitos?

Time runs out for the few forests left in town.
Pray for trees who’ve been, and soon will be, cut down.
Log trucks roll dismembered trunks to the mainland.
Some days, it’s more than my broken heart can stand.

Condominiums spore like amanita mushrooms.
Where can the orphaned creatures live, including friends
and families who give so much to our kids, our communities?
What will the fierce winds ravage when there are no trees?
May alders and willows sprout in every crack of impervious surface.
May mycorhyzza heal the breaks and fissures in the earth.
May rains clean our waters and wash the rot of greed from our lands.
May we relearn our interconnectedness with trees, streams, and seas.
May forests grow again and cover the stain of our ignorance and shame.