Forestry Today

John Rutherford

October 20, 2022

When the concrete spreads and the town conquers

The country’s heart; — C.S. Lewis

They cut the pasture next to me,

shaved Mother Nature’s head to the scalp,

dark earth trowel-smooth, the old trees

hauled away for chips at German Pellet.

I could not have named the trees

if my life had depended on it.

What's a sycamore to me?

A water oak? A loblolly pine?

They didn’t teach us in school. 

The next day the lines were in the dirt,

marked out with little bits of string,

the boards laid down, concrete to pour

for, the advertisements said, a gas station

and a liquor store and a laundromat

to open Spring of 2023, to be open 24

hours every day on my unlit, quiet

country lane, wood-romance ended,

another outpost of town’s conquest,

an army in hi-viz jackets and hardhats.

John Rutherford is a poet writing in Beaumont, Texas. Since 2018 he has been an employee in the Department of English at Lamar University.