Christmas Tree

in
the
unroamed
loamed alone
of cathedral forests
where resounds the
echoing silence of the
great timber organ pipes that
tower into the crystal distance
among the cool green and
deep honey dark secret caches
of shadowed silence there grow
the christmas trees
child trees still suckling
woodmilk from beneath the moss
to lift their sapling fingers and touch
full stride their miracle
but these child trees as christmas
ornaments are severed from sanctuary
by seasoned hunters with steel saws and
shiny axes and brought to towns
priced and tagged trimmed and dragged off to
christmastreetion camps where amid
the pallor of neon and the roaring ugliness of the
christmas crash they wait for christmas
people to inspect them and select them to fit a
certain space in a certain place so much
less than a wilderness with tinsel and glass paper
and plastic trash foam and fuzz flashing lights
and icons they stand dressed to hide their slow dry dying
M
E
R
R
Y
CHRISTMAS

--Mason Williams