The Trees Are Talking

By Michael Baker, McNamee Road

Fifteen years ago, I moved here
to live among the trees.
Through seasonal snow and storm,
they have nourished me under
their verdant, enveloping sway.
Every summer since, this ridge 
registers another thermal record.

My dog and I walk the ridge road daily
counting dying western red cedars
in the dry, clay-bound soil
as an incremental brown annihilation 
spreads up neighboring hills.
After two years of meager rainfall, 
I check the carnage daily
of cedar crowns desiccating to brown. 
Monthly, death descends to lower branches.

Immense doug firs, spindly hemlocks
counter late summer’s lack of water 
by throwing a heavy harvest of cones, 
weighing branches with lighter green,
as they prepare for their coming death
in a last gasp of reproduction.
Out of this parched timber, the only trees 
unaffected endure in second growth: 
the scrub trees, alder and big leaf maple.

All over the northwest,
in Cascade foothills, along tidewater flats,
the trees are talking.
Haze, heat and smoke envelop us. 
The forests are burning;
individual trees explode like candles
and creatures of the understory
scurry to find their safety islands.

“Plant cypress,” an arborist suggested 
after assessing our woods 
of blistered hemlocks, stressed 
doug firs and dying cedars.
“The climate’s changing. 
We won’t have red cedars 
at this latitude much longer.”

I crush a sprig of braided cedar,
inhale its heady incense,
look up at the bright, cloudless sky
and hope for rain.
Our redemption remains far off. 
Can we atone for not listening 
to what the trees have been saying?                                             

©Michael Baker, September 1, 2020
​RR 1020