With all apologies to Dr. Seuss, I wrote a poem over the holiday break concerning the alarming rate of tree removal in Matthews.
Stumptown 2050:
A Cautionary Tale
Once many years from now in a place called Levine
A child asked her grandfather about something
she’d never seen.
In school she saw only pictures of leaves way up on high
And in autumn rainbows of color that once blew
through the sky.
Whatever happened Papa, to those things they called trees?
Why are they all gone? Did they die of disease?
The old man grimaced as he searched for words to say
And fondly remembered the trees of his youth
and a time far away.
With nervousness in his voice but honesty on his breath,
The man spoke to the child about the trees
and their death.
No sweet child, we cut and bulldozed them all down.
You see there was no room for trees in our kind of town.
In “our kind of town?” the girl said with surprise.
You cut them all down! as tears filled her eyes.
Yes we cut them all down in the name of progress.
In our kind of town, we built to impress, I guess.
But what could you build any better than a tree?
There was never anything as grand, if you ask me.
We cut them all down to make room for new shops
and some dumps
Sporting fields and new roads with lots of speed humps
Parking lots and offices, apartments and houses
all around,
And when nobody came we even bulldozed
those things down.
Why didn’t you stop them? the little girl implored.
Weren’t there great protests at your Zoning Board?
Didn’t you ever think about the future, about me?
Didn’t you think someday I might like to see a tree?
We paved a path along the sewer line for you kids
back then
And left a few trees along the edges I think,
but then again,
The flood waters came hard and with no trees left
above it
All the green died away – there was no way to stop it.
But surely some folks wanted trees on their land,
Why did you cut every one? I don’t understand!
Yes child it is true there were a few trees left,
some of size
But the incinerator’s acid rain caused those few trees’ demise.
Well our teacher gave each of us a sapling today.
I’m going to plant mine in my yard and maybe someday
Kids like me won’t have to travel to see a tree in a town,
And we’ll never let short-minded fools cut them
all down!
John Higdon
Matthews
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