Kyler Jones
11/7/1
I find myself silent, black
hoodie up, lying down, arms covered over my eyes blocking the sun, what I see
is the grass. The grass. And then-flashback.
I remember it was summer and this entire mini prairie that I
crouch on now was alive with sunflowers, and various tall plants, like
lavender. I didn’t know much about plants then (don’t know much about the
now),but I knew there was something beautiful about this area that made me
subconsciously venture there at my spare time, accompanied with my dog. The
grass that I lay on now, was bright green and smooth then, and I always
thought, this is here to stay, they-can-not-touch-it. As worn down and small
fraction of what’s left of nature, it was still monumental to me, surpassing
the awe of any skyscraper or city landscape you could see, To this day it is
like a dying paradise. The grass passage way, always polished with dew, and the
tall plants diverse with sunflowers, rabbits, spiders, hidden animals of all
sorts, buzzing and moving with life. It was easy to get lost, and ignore the
suburban wasteland on the other side of the creek.
So my spirit is back to the present
now, in the same position, at birds eye view, I look as if I had fallen down
and shielding myself from a bomb above. And then the grass I glimpse at, the
grass of the now, the entire pathway, scarred by the tracks of construction
machines. I’m still shielding myself, but I look away from the gruesome grass,
and I try to look up ahead at the rest of the pathway. I always knew the
pathway was finite. And at the end was more houses, but this time, the lovely
trees that used to shelter the lost animals in it, were moving in the distance.
I found this scary at first, for the fact that they were moving, but then I realized
that their actually being commanded to move by the construction workers- and
I’m scared at that fact even more. I sit up, and something is in my stomach.
It’s the deer. The deer I saw a couple of weeks ago, there were so many that
time. They were hidden, untouchable. But you saw them prancing so closely all
along the half wood. Half wood, I should say nearly wood. And then they just
disappeared.
‘ Oh yes I remember the deer, yes
they’re shooting them off now because they are so overpopulated and lost out of
their natural habitat.’ Said Justine Pierce.
Justine Pierce was a middle class,
woman of bold age and bold wrinkles. She works at the Cobbs Creek Environmental
Branch in Yeadon. She’s seen the same things I’ve seen. And cried the same
tears, when the water department destroyed the land around the creek, last
summer. I met her a last month,
those were words she told me.
I watched a documentary a couple
days ago called “End-Civ”, I remember a clip where an anonymous Earth First!
Member talks about how they mark the trees they will leave during clear cuts. I
thought about how those trees were scarred forever, as the WWII Jewish
holocaust survivors were scarred for life with tattoos. Clear cuts are a
holocaust. The Jews were devoured for profit, and the trees are devoured for
profit.
Bears, I hear the sound of bears.
Loud grizzly bears screaming, I want them to be bears. But I know they are the
sounds of chainsaws and machines. And then there’s the laughter of the big
bellied construction workers. They leave their coffee cups, Dunkin Donut
wrappers, and gasoline tanks in on the soil. But I know I can’t be angry at
them, because I know that they are just trying to make a livin’.I know they
need to eat.
I walk to where there was once a
beautiful landscape of trees, and I see a broken trashed up grave. And the
trees, the trees, all of them piled up, past my head. Then I remember how in
war they pile up the dead bodies, without proper burials. The soldiers get
proper burials. I saw only a
couple trees left, they were all scarred with the X’s, I saw a black cat run up
the trees as my dog Poncho went after it. Then I remember all the animals that
make these trees their homes. The nests these trees provide, the oxygen, they
shelter the tops soil so that life can grow.
Between the sound of the
construction workers laughing as they tore down trees on the other side of
creek, the loud industrial roars of the chainsaws, why do I not feel shame. Why
do I not feel the tears? I’m afraid to feel, but I’m even more afraid not to.
If pain is the only thing I can
feel, than let me have the most miserable life I can. I don’t see the
rationality in destroying your planet in the name of human progress.The earth is a finite resource, in fact it's not a resource it's a living thing. It’s not sanity to kill everything, in the requirements of a technological God? You can’t pay for the air you
pollute, the water you blacken, the animals and land that we gobble up and replace with these deserts we call cities. We’re all guilty for
when the time comes when we realize that our children can not eat money.
