Buzz RRRRRRRRRRR Thunk

The soundtrack of my life currently involves the decimation of 3 perfectly healthy 80+ year old trees that once stood mightily in the neighbor's yard. The house is across the street and down one, yet the sounds of chainsaws and hunks of wood clanging against a metal trailer are everpresent in our house. It's been this way for 3 weeks. Giant trees do not go easily or quietly. I do not know why the trees have been destroyed, and I can't really think of any good reason to do so...not even building a new house on the lot.

I've been away for a week, a trip up home to see the family in Illinois and Iowa. I come from a place where trees are sacred. Settlers of the prairie planted trees to hold back the wind and hold down the precious topsoil. In Northeast Iowa, the woodland forest of the east meets the prairie of the middle west. Spreading west of Waterloo, are acres and acres of open farmland set out on the Jeffersonian grid of township and range lines, and as I drove, I could identify where the farmhouses were, long before I saw them, by the stands of trees.

I suspect there will be something about trees coming up in whatever poems come next, and perhaps the disjointed rhythm of the chainsaw and hurled wood as well.