Proforestation: Poetry Edition!

April is #NaPoWriMo, or National Poetry Writing Month, and today I’m sharing a poem from my writing attempts so far this month, which are all going to be based on the work of

Paul Hawken

in his book, Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation.

I have selected 30 different entries from this book, which I am loving—it's been a really good read so far—and responding in poetry to the subjects that come up in this book.

Today’s poem is in response to two chapters, really, in Regeneration, “Proforestation” and “Boreal Forests.” The poem is a villanelle, which has a strict set of rules about rhyme and refrain that I make attempts to follow and shamelessly break here and there.

I’ve chosen the title, “To the Old Growth Forests, I Go (O Absalom!).”

When Absalom dies, David is just so heartbroken. It's one of the most heartbreaking verses in scripture. He cries out, “Oh, Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom, my son,” and you can just hear the anguish in the way that the writer portrayed David’s grief. There's just so much regret over what has happened. And I felt like that sentiment was appropriate for this poem.

To the Old Growth Forests, I Go (O Absalom!)

“Trees from the boreal forests of Canada are harvested and pulped to make luxury two-ply toilet paper.”

- Paul Hawken, Regeneration

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I’ve often wondered when the red oak
on our property was planted.
If it took a hundred years to grow,

this tree has watched his comrades lowed
and timbered, forest flattened.
Its acorn tumbled from a mother oak’s

high branches one autumn, when no
clearing yet existed, and landed
where a squirrel could help it grow.

I treasure mornings spent in its shadow
and try not to take for granted
the life of what I dare call my red oak.

A feller buncher bites and swallows
northern forests whole. The slanted
light erupts across the landscape’s groan

of wood chip dust. Oh well, let’s go.
I need some paper towels and Charmin
so I can flush the cousins of the oak
that took a hundred years to grow.

Photo by Matthew Smith on Unsplash

A Few More Words from Hawken:

“Until recently, the scientific community assumed that older trees sequestered carbon marginally, if at all. Now we know trees accumulate significant amounts of carbon to almost the end of their long lives. Proforestation would have a forty times greater impact between now and 2100 than newly planted forests.” - from Regeneration by Paul Hawken

And a Few More Words from Me:

If you're not looking to do a lot of reading about this idea, proforestation is the idea that we should just let the old growth forests, the boreal forests, the tropical forests, all of these spaces that are still virgin forests, just let them be, and they will continue to do the work of drawing down carbon and restoring our environment.

So one of the steps that we need to take as a community is to just protect the forests that we already have, rather than thinking that we can mow them all down and replant them and have the same effect. It’s just not a 1:1 exchange.

So that is your poem for this first Friday in April. Again, I'm really looking forward to sharing a lot of poems this month. I'm going to be sharing every Friday and then one a day during Holy Week leading up to Easter Sunday. And then I've got an idea brewing for Earth Day that will not be poetic necessarily, but maybe it'll be poetic writing.

I'm looking forward to sharing more of what I have been brewing and chewing on, some new poems and some old poems.

I hope that you have a blessed rest of your day and are finding lots of time and space to bask in the presence of God and all of the wonders and light and awe of this season.

May it be the buoy that carries you through these stormy, tumultuous times.