Thread: Season Of Harvest

There the Woodhick sits
scrutinizing his steely feller buncher.
Auriferous, as it lay dormant,
unpitying of yesterdays take.
Its doom laden hand idly waiting;
Indiscriminate teeth at the ready.
Unconscious of the obligation it bears.

With a stubborn gesture
the Cruncher is engendered.
Bellowing as it works a foreordained path.
It’s esurient custodian intoxicated with power,
pulls his strings mastering the beast.
Eyes fixed to the woodlands, ravenous,
intentions stark by his own right.

Somewhere a Tree Topper performs his dance,
sings an acerbic song, its sordid nature concealed.
Trees offer themselves to him unknowing,
assured felicity in exchange for appendages,
Honor in the removal of the fruit it bears.
Choke Setters cast them to the landing;
Aligned, a semblance of their own accord.

They are tended to by the Chasers,
preparing them for a new life
As they lay bleeding, will unbroken;
To succumb to their newfangled macrocosm.
They have given that which makes them unique
in exchange have joined their hollow fraternity.
Flocking like the banded sugar ant to aphids,
for a picayune few yield excrement so fragrant.

The chosen now walk skid row
on their course with annihilation.
Beautiful in a functional sort of way,
the way that was intended;
By a self-consumed Lumberjack
fulfilling his own Agency
with a job well done.

Left behind are the stumps,
spreading across a bleak landscape
once ripe with life. Desolate.
For they have served a higher purpose,
to maintain a standard put in place
in a time before them.
A standard that will remain unchanged
long after they are gone.

The feller buncher lay sleepless,
Woodhicks dine on the fruit of today.

You've limited your audience to those who understand logger lingo, but that's cool.

Your use of commas, periods, and capitals appears indiscriminate and without purpose.

I can follow the piece, and am moved by it, but am also unsettled by the punctuation.

In the fifth line of the fourth stanza, what is the purpose of the comma between "that" and "which?"

I think this piece needs some general cleaning up before I could be seriously engaged.

For me, it flops because of what appears to me to be careless punctuation.

I see your point with the punctuation. The only incorrect use of capitals I can see is after semi colons, the rest are intended. I will work on cleaning this up and being more careful in the future.

As for the logger lingo, I can't say I agree. I think those who don't know the lingo have a better chance of understanding the meaning. Which is not really about logging.

Cheers.

This is cool. You use language well, I think, and the vernacular is rad. I'm not a logger, and I am your audience. It works. It's WHY it works.

I sort of love this poem. It's a little bleak, and I don't usually go for bleak things, but it's alsoe very natural and wooden and cozy. If I'm to be bleak, I want it in a wood panelled room.

Whitman meets Malthus