Panitikan

The Tree-born Phantom Flames

by Ramon Perez / “Buko Joe”

The winds are burning but without fire.

Would you believe me if I told you that trees have an afterlife?

A life after living the virtue of beneficence and benevolence,

they go to no heaven.

They provide paradise, yet they go to no paradise.

When they fall, only hell calls for their souls.

The sky is burning, for they are haunting.

A flaming expanse.

The phantom of forests.

A sea of dreams of souls of ents.

The dream of dead woodlands to end their deaths.

The trees—

they are here.

They are haunting our surroundings

for twenty years or even more,

blazing

as an unseen inferno,

scorching

the lands of their ancestors

that men have taken.

The air is burning,

and it will persist until

we

stop the slaughter

of trees

and give back

the lands

that have been taken

to the children of the forest—

the seedlings

and saplings—

a new generation of trees

to bring back life.