Let us leave this poisonous place then.

Let us leave this poisonous place then.
This scaly cancerous scab on the surface of the earth,
with it’s yellow cloak of corrupted air and marauding bands of pathetic drunks,
drowning in the sorrow of the earth.
Let us go to the forests while we still can.
To the winter mud and jewel dripping trees.
With courage and love, let us embrace the pain and fear we hide from in the city.
In wild nomadic bands, rich with the colours of the earth and sky we will
reclaim what we hold in trust for those yet to be named.

We will endure the lies and insults of government lackeys, and loggers.
Even the hate filled wives, as they scream all the injustice in the history of the world at us.
We will suffer the snarling of their machines though the noise hurts our souls.
Reaching deep inside our true humanness we will find the courage to stand
there, month after month, bearing witness to the carnage all around us.
We choose the most beautiful places and put our pathetic flesh in front of
the machines, a fragile human arm locked into cement under the gravel road,
maybe we hold up the destruction for an hour, on a good day six or seven.
Even as they load us into the paddy wagons we hear the work resume,
the crashing, splintering death agony of ancient Karri’s.
We smell their blood through the bars of the cage.
Bulldozers roar, smashing through the understory exposing the big trees for the faller.
Great silver trunks naked, vulnerable.

Returning to camp after the humiliation of finger printing, processed and de-humanised.
Exhausted by the last nights work, we take comfort in the family we have become.
We convince ourselves it was worth it and struggle to feel something, anything,
through the barriers we erect against the continual pain and stress of this work.

“Get a job”,
“Have a wash”, the workers scream from their utes as they knock off for the day.

In the quiet of the night tension crackles all around.
The unspoken fear of a drunken attack or a government bust always chills the air.
We ask why it is so tiring all this sitting around drinking tea,
and talk of the lives we would like to lead when this is all over.
The ancient forest is relentless in her demands of us.
We feel her strength in our hearts and bodies like the rush of a drug.
If we stay we feel like a shell, fragile, sustained only by the forest
and our little community.

If we leave we collapse, empty, defeated.

chris lee