Lost Forest

28 October 2021

The bulldozers are out today,
are blazing in what once was forest.

I was in this forest
as a child.

Do the workers know
the sound of crickets here
within leaves, the sound
of song that matches oversong?

I am not sentimental,
for I know it to be earth
becoming earth,
and yet I wonder what earth is,

Because the poets ask, and keep on asking,
though they cannot answer,
for we find the question worthy.

Something in the wind
this time of year
must stir uncertainty.

What shall we ask the bulldozer?
What does it know?