beholder

She stands at the window
observing people
destroying the trees
around her house, so
the tenants won't have any leaves
to rake.

They don't understand

and neither does she,
but they won't get away with it.
She sees

What they're going to take.

She sees the workmen, impersonal.
They arrive in small
white trucks, for a job
they were hired to do
like any other.

If they had refused,
then somebody else

would be watched, right now

by the girl who is watching you

Who is trying
to help, to witness,
to do what she can,
to see what is wrong,
and not turn away
from such business.

These aren't their trees,
but they go right through
and they take them down.

These trees belong
to whoever will pay
to cut through the living trunks
and leave stumps,
like ready-made headstones,
marking graves.
These trees,

there was nothing wrong
with them, and no one
and nothing
to save.

These trees,
they belonged
to the birds, all around
dropping down
what they think
of us.

While they couldn't have known,

we can see they were right,
by how we treat
what we say

we own.

She stands by the window
and sees it all. In her mind,
she holds who's responsible.

And maybe, one night or two gone by,
she'll sneak out with a knife
and carve some sign

to show "goodbye,"
and "I wish I could save you,"
and "I know who did it."
I saw it all.

And maybe they'll see,
from their own windows.
They'll see and they'll know

she saw everything.

They'll go out in the morning,
to find the stumps marked
with a love heart and date
of the tree's demise,

and everything eerily silent
- no birds to sing.

And then, uneasy, they'll bring
themselves

to look up to the window

and meet her eyes.