The loggers came two summers past
they took the biggest and oldest trees,
all my favorite companions, blossoming
into imperfect, asymmetric Rococo domes
of lush and fleshy, deep emerald leaves
every year, in May, covering nights skies
with curvaceous plumage all summer.

I knew they were gone. I watched the loggers
drive up every morning with the sun still low,
their chainsaws roared over songbirds and cars
passing on the highway a mile north, my friends
crashed down, were roughly dissected, dug out
with chains and tractors, the leaf covered ground
and worn down roads still littered with their entrails.

Their absence finally hit me last weekend
when the west wind was blowing, sweetening
my backyard air with pleasant spring scents,
but it left an aching emptiness in my stomach
where butterflies usually flutter nervously,
under the whooshing wind I heard new silence
where stead was the stiff creaking of century oaks.