Bloody Stumps

There are these old stumps
I come across walking in the woods.
They are covered in life
And yet a reminder
Of the life that was,
Long gone now.
Cut years before I walked this spot.

The loggers came and removed the forest
Maybe, 30 years ago?
These were the stumps
That held up trees past
Now removed

I often imagine
Standing here among the
Stumps
What the forest once looked like
When
Our stumps were connected
To trunks
And branches
Out from which sprang life

Branches within which
Whole entire civilizations
Of creatures
Growing and dead
Were strung overhead

It’s as if
Someone came along and removed you from the ankles up
What would be left, but a couple of bloody stumps.
From which
The others would need
To base all their projections
Of what you might have been
Before
Who you were in and out?
But also
Who you held in your branches
Of love and support?

Now among the stumps
I walk
Only seeing that which is not.
Left guessing what my eyes cannot see
But which shapes the community
Now manifested in minute scale on these dead old stumps.

Little, no, tiny
forest of lichen and moss
Canopy to the ants and beetles
Overstory and cascading webs of complexity

All we’ve done
Is remove our forest
Our home among the trees and rocks
And with it
Our many, many others’
Who stood with us
shoulder to shoulder

But here stands the tiny forest of the stumps
Alive and well
And full of layered beauty.