The Forest calls you Home
Intro poem to book of the same name.
Listen!
Our rings hold stories
older than your words.
When you cut a tree in the forest
and there is no one there to hear it,
does it make a sound?
You humans often ask.
Performing wisdom,
yet failing to sense.
When you cut a tree,
the forest screams.
Of course we make a sound.
Vibrations
inaudible,
hum through air,
ground,
and water.
Resonating membrane,
fragile fibre,
hair
and bone.
Our chemical cries
signals on the breeze.
You are deaf to our pain.
We, who give so freely—
shelter,
shade,
food,
breath,
flood defence—
are reduced to fuel,
furniture,
snot rags
and ass-wipes.
You eat,
but don’t feed.
Forgetting
even Death
feeds Life,
as Life
feeds Death.
Yet there are memories
knotted in root,
branch,
and mycelial mind.
Tales of a time
when we too
took
more
than we gave.
We armored ourselves
in lignin—
hardened flesh
against decay.
Impervious.
Inedible.
Our fallen piled high.
Uneaten.
The sacred feast.
Interrupted.
Many rings before you,
we choked the world
with our wastes,
ending countless branches
of life’s tree.
Today we atone
through our gifts.
Leaves became soil.
Soil flowed off our dense roots,
and fed algal blooms.
Starving oceans
of light
and life.
Too much
and too little.
All born from our denial
of Death’s hunger.
Sacred springs
plugged
or flooded.
WE caused an extinction.
Many beings
forever ceased.
It took 60 million rings
for the patient eater
to learn
how to feed.
White rot fungus
feasted upon our corpses,
laid high on the land.
Birthing fresh soil,
and new life.
Now our buried bones
return extinctions’ spectre.
Those fossil blooms,
black blood
in new giants’ veins.
Gollums shitting
new not-yet-foods
the patient eater
must learn to consume.
Our mummified dead
become ghosts,
poisoning the sky
anew.
The world burns
once more.
Our own dead
used
to murder us.
We sense your despair.
Hear your cries.
Even as others of your kind
slay us
(and you)
for money.
You fear decay,
yet decay
is the womb
from which life springs.
Mother Mushroom waits
patiently.
She will eat you
when you are
ready.
Yet she prefers to feast
on those whose lives
taste
sweet.
Fear and rage
taste bitter
on her many tongues.
She calls you
to live well
with the forest you are.
To enjoy our fruits,
shade,
and shelter,
and help extend
our provisions to all beings.
You are a sapling,
root-bound
in culture’s pot.
Bonsai humans.
Pruned souls.
Nutrient flows
controlled.
Shaping you
to desert cultures’ whim.
Rootless
and swift,
you think yourselves
apart.
Yet you are
a
part,
an organ
of the forest.
Without you,
the forest has
no hands.
We need you
to balance
the flows.
The forest calls you.
To feed it,
nurture it.
Help grow
a Feast
that Never
Ends.
Return!
Not to caves,
but to kinship.
The soil
is your cradle
and your grave.
Air
our shared breath.
Water
our collective blood.
You are the Forest.
Act like it.
Crack!
Civilization’s pot
Let your roots
unfurl.
Entwine!
Entangle!
Give more
than you receive.
Come back.
Rewild
yourself.
The Forest
calls
You
Home.