The Forest Remembers

 

It now stands proudly as an urban forest where

once it was wilderness, but even as an urban

forest it remains an oasis of natural beauty

accessible to residents of nearby communities

as a wonder of nature revealing the seasons

to those accustomed to concrete in place

of a forest floor churning with renewal. The

forest remembers days long since gone when

only the animals, many of which have abandoned

the forest as their natural habitat roamed its inner 

precincts. The forest remembers when settlers

arrived as the time when hatchets and saws

axes and the brute strength of dray horses

denuded readily reached areas. But this is a

forest incorporated within a deep ravine, yet

it too was breached. The forest remembers when

the stream bisecting it at the ravine's basin

became a lake during heavy rains where fish

leaped and area farmers sent their sons to

fish and hunt. One pine recalls its youth when

farm children hammered wood strips along 

one of its leaders so they could ascend to

its topmost branches. That tree, now a forest

giant attained great height, its massive trunk

supporting three huge leaders, the wood

strips intact but towering high out of reach

of any urban children who might now pass by.