RED CEDAR WORTH MORE STANDING
by Anne Hansen
(An earlier version of this poem was submitted to the Emily Carr 150 Poetry Contest, Victoria, BC, November 2021)

It’s a horrible sight to see a tree felled.
The fairy creeks of my time have all gone to the money barons.
What would Lone Cedar look like now, or 
Forest, British Columbia or 
A Rushing Sea of Undergrowth?

Look at our BC premier today, chainsaw for a brain.
Even a lobotomized amoeba is smarter than that fool.
It doesn't take a genius.  Red Cedar is worth more standing.
Most men are very stupid.  Their money spoils it all.

Little Emily — me — old soul, born in a snowstorm in 1871.
They could never domesticate me.  Now an old hag, 150 years on.

My, how time flies when you’re rolling over in your grave!
Forever twisting this way and that, like an ancient cedar in a Ucluelet storm.
How can I sleep, when an enemy circles, dying to kill every square inch of
My lover the forest.  Death of a thousand cuts.

Heaven up here.  A house of all sorts.
Hundreds and thousands of deadbeats and layabouts.
Tenants with their petty grievances, tedious as art society tea at the Empress.
This old lady landlady feels an eviction notice coming on.
It's from Mother Nature to all of us.

Wake-up time!  It’s 2021 already.
Heaven help the baby born this summer.
Forests charred, half the province on fire, whole towns aflame,
An inferno of cadmium orange and carbon black.

Dear Mother Earth, Emily here:
God save our art, the animals, the coast, the seasons, the forests
and all the unceded and stolen land.