A/N: There is a story behind this poem... my friends and I became friends with a group of trees outside our school. It was a pretty place, with trees in a sort of circle, blocking us from the world, almost. The trees there were happy, and they accepted us as their friends. For about two years we went there, and it was our place to be with them... to laugh with them.. cry with them. One day we came to find them dead, destroyed by our school, for no good reason. I ask that you read this and think about your tree friend, or your best friend in the world. Put yourself in our shoes... because... only then will you understand what these trees meant to us. They were our friends. Thank you. FDW

Softly their leaves blew

In the gentle breeze

Sunlight rained through their boughs

And laughter flitted through their leaves.

They smiled as they watched their friends

Spread out in the grass below them

Teasing and talking to each other

Being the hippies that they were.

The sun beat down on their leaves

And the wind blew through their branches

The years passed, one then two

And still the friends came back

To talk to them, hug them, be with them.

Then one day, in the early morning

People came with machines and saws

The trees began to quake as they watched

The men start their hellish motors.

Did you hear them scream

As the saw bit into their bark?

Did you hear them cry

As their love ones were lost?

When the Three came back to the Grove

The place where their friendship began-

Where they had laughed and they had cried-

Despair filled their suddenly wet eyes.

Their friends were there,

Hacked to the floor,

Their limbs and branches

Lying strewn across the grass.

One reached down,

Placing her fingers to the stump that was left,

And cried to realize that the sap was still fresh.

Another walked to a tree left standing

And wrapped her arms tight around it’s base

Feeling the tree’s heart mourning

Feeling her own soul break.

The last sat beside one of the fallen

Sorrow in his dark eyes and heart

He listened as the tree dying,

Whispered her name to him.

The Three came back to the center

Of their beloved Grove

And lay on their backs

Gazing to the beautiful blue sky.

How could it be so bright?

So vivid and happy?

When their friends had died

In the slaughter of men.

How could the sun continue to shine

When their friends were murdered?

Cut and sawed,

Bulldozed and trampled.

They were but trees!

Helpless and defenseless

Slaughtered without cause.

The Tree-Friends felt their hearts yearn

for revenge against their kin.

How would you feel

If your friends were hacked

Strewn across a bloody plain?

Would your heart break?

Would you feel pain?

Yes, they were trees

But trees are living, too

They were our friends

And now they are gone..

I ask you to care, to understand

I ask that you save and preserve our land

We only have one,

And then it will be gone…

Gone like our Grove,

gone like our friends.