No Forest To My Eye

I just returned from a brief visit to the old stomping grounds, northern Michigan. While there we drove by some "managed" forests, some in a state of recovery, in a sense, because they at least had some undergrowth, but most in that sterile, artificial system of straight, orderly rows of tall, narrow pines limbed high enough not to interfere with logging equipment. Some of these are the result of the old clear cutting methods preferred by most logging companies. Some, the product of the newer "modified" clear cuts that are supposed to leave room for other species somewhere in the mix. While I know we're never going to eliminate the need for wood and wood pulp in any foreseeable future and recognize and, on some level, support the use of managed forests as a somewhat sustainable option to simply moving along to older "virgin" forests to fill that need, part of me still cringes when these tree factories are referred to as forests. Forests are wild places; these are nothing of the sort. So I'm working on a poem about it. Here's the current version:

No Forest To My Eye

Woods, maybe,
This managed thing,
This uniform place,
But certainly no forest.

Cut down the old growth,
Grade it, plow it,
Remove the rocks and stumps,
The heart of it.

The dog is no more wolf
Than these trees a true woods;
Yet does the dark arboreal past
Lurk in and haunt a forest's dreams

Like the running packs
That hunt and leap
Behind the lids of
Twitching, sleeping dogs?

Even rows and perfect spaces
Undergrowth cleared and
Harvest ready. Tagged
And color coded. Forests.

No. Forests don't leave you dizzy.
Forests don't walk the straight path,
Domesticated and tame.