Reduction

Reaching out to the Cerulean sky,
House and halt of avians flight,
Swinging leaves, thrumming breeze,
Complete ease, total peace,
Students gathering round, some pretext,
No one anticipated what happened next.

That day, the sun glared, wind was blowing,
Flora fledglings growing, but disaster was stowing,
Axes, those terrible metal lumps,
Reduced them to mere wooden stumps,
Axes, come with the instruction of destruction,
Stopped just short of death blow decimation.

But the souls of the trees,
Were blown to the breeze.
Trees turned into brown barked columns,
With branches become a memory solemn.
Trees, not murdered but mutilated,
Identity not hanged but humiliated.

Severely pruned, not uprooted,
Mother Nature crushed, not burned or sooted,
Green glimpses reduced, abused, singed, scarred,
Trunks sans branches chopped but not charred.
Growth imprisonment for the guileless trees,
A different death penalty daily.
Punished for a crime they did not commit,
Victims of a crime mute spectators permit.

* * * * *

Redemption
Stronger roots will be raised,
Longer shoots will rise,
Under the guidance of Mother Nature,
Wonderfully wise,
Between inhuman greed and Nature’s growth,
Extraneous excess desire will become loath.

Humanity will grow, and so will the trees,
The Lord’s Masterpieces
Birds, bushes, bees and breeze,
All things bright and beautiful,
All thoughts kind and colorful,
We shall take pain, strain and joyously deign,
to sustain, maintain and retain.

Green Goddess guides growth again,
Breaking free from the metal net,
Lest the amnesiac axe again forget.