In the burnt hole in the centre of a giant Sequoia

I’m standing at the door of the apocalypse

waiting for someone to save us

wondering if the Sequoia still thinks it’s still living

and because I wonder if trees have angels

all the things I imagined are slowly vanishing.

To a 3,000-year-old tree, what is civilisation?

People imagine that trees reach toward the sky.

That the sky is G-d.

But what about the roots?

They weave through the living earth like a mysterious net

and capture the voices of the dead.

Underground, those voices speak still.

Maybe snails are angels.

Their voices echo in my mind

like a sky blacked out with smoke.

Staring at innumerable trees burnt black

like dark toothpicks poking the mountainside.

I don’t want to buy a BMW.

I want to be a snail.

I want to eat the dead

avoid salt

and leave a trail of green slime.

In the Giant Forest

I stood in the centre of a giant sequoia.

A passerby said

‘This is not what I expected’

and a little kid threw a plastic bottle

at General Sherman.

We stopped.

In the silence I tried to listen to the trees.

I believe the trees were listening to me.

I can’t imagine a future.

My imagination is on fire.

Being born a human being

is a crime.