Raising Forests
       

we are not the first generation to lose forests
as trees were slain for ships and forts
l'nu hunters were refused entry to their territory
fracturing livelihoods and continuity

in this landscape there have been many ends of the world
as one knows it
parents mourned children at the edges of cliffs
guardians became chained to bottles

to know the stories
as story carriers do
is to constantly taste scars where the wounds
had long punctured through

people already devastated by massacres of forests
each new generation's lost battle to save trees
too many centuries of someone's world in pieces

let's tend to the forests like prophets
encourage them to wilder in old growth
and watch them mature into being

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Copyright © 2021 shalan joudry All rights reserved
from The Dalhousie Review and from Waking Ground (2020, Gaspereau Press)
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission