It was a crystal blue autumn day

when we arrived to cut down your sisters and brothers.

You breathed in their cries mixed with gasoline.

You felt your mother’s roots ripped from yours as she fell.

We dragged away their corpses for our halls and walls,

our floors and heat, our writing and the

paper with which we wipe our asses.

Left you standing alone.

Left our fucking Coors Lite cans and

Pepsi bottles among the loped limbs

of your family.

We said we left you to re-seed the forest.

Or were we like the Romans, chopping off the heads

of every tenth villager they conquered.

Decimating, just because we can.