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of me, a very humble tree, to dare to speak to all you important people, but I want you to realize we're all in this thing together. I've tried to keep on doing my job, because something inside me demands it. Don't human beings have anything inside them which demands that they care about important things? I believe at your level it's called conscience or something. From what I've heard of your history I believe every great and powerful civilization—Babylon, Greece, Rome, China, India—has foundered and diminished as they destroyed their forested watersheds, and as their life-support systems were destroyed. My ridge is part of a watershed of the Kentucky River. It has coal in it. It could be stripmined out of existence. Legislators, citizens, you have a chance to save yourselves—and us —by caring for and protecting your forests. I know I sound emotional. I am emotional. At this juncture in civilization's history we need emotion and intelligence if the country is not to lose its long-term health in pursuit of shortterm wealth. Wouldn't it be wiser to "cull" or "harvest" or "strip" from among us those men of influence and power who consider a tree useless, rather than to allow them to destroy the trees who intend, as long as we are permitted to live, to continue the functions that best serve the community of which we are a part? The Spot Rutted hub-deep, the lane rumples down to the creek. The silver husk of a carp crinkles under a halo of jittering flies. Buffed by the touch of hands, branches lean shadows on the green-brown water. Here the high school stars come to get bombed, stud the weeds with burst sneakers, broken combs. Couples smoke dope here, sow mud with condoms. From a twig, like a soiled banner, blue panties flick, tease in the breeze. And loners come, to dream down the blue length of gun barrels and trigger off their grief. And fishermen, who mold the clay banks, shape them with their faithless waiting. Evening comes with a farm cat, gliding. Out on the big road traffic mutters. A tractor chug-chugs. A crow caws twice. Ants dwaddle across a sun-mottled log. Light settles. The farm cat turns, mouse dangling from her jaws. Her eyes round, drawing earth and sky into one unmoving now. The wind keens, low murmurs through small high branches. The land, as always, seems to listen. —Mark DeFoe 34 ...

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