RedRavenPoems

I can still remember the day I first seen the picture, now so old that the color has faded from it. I was young, little more than a boy. It was something magical to me back then. So vivid, so filled with color and life, I had never seen anything like it.

My world, was nothing but cold steel and plastics. It was all I had ever known you see. Oh there were colors, many of them, yet nothing so… green, so.. full of delight as the photograph I had seen.

I asked my parents about it, and my father had simply smiled, and told me to go speak to my grandfather. So that’s what I did.

I still remember the look of wistfulness that crossed his face when he saw what I held. The sadness that brimmed up, showing as tears in his old eyes. He held the picture fondly, and did not speak for a moment. Then he finally spoke.

“This was where I was raised, the land I called home. It was a wonderful place… and I miss it everyday.” Even as a boy I recognized the pain in him. Though I had no idea what caused it. And like all children at that age, I was full of questions.

“What is it? What is all this green stuff growing on the floor? What are those huge things with green on them?” I had never seen anything like it, and I had to know.

“The green on the floor, as you call it” he said quietly “was the grass growing. That’s not floor either my boy, that’s soil. What you would call dirt, or even earth if being more precise. The big things you see? Those are trees.”

Of course this just inspired more questions, and I of course asked them. Why didn’t we have them anymore? Why couldn’t we live in a place like that? Why did we live inside this cold gray box, instead of a place as wonderful as this.

My grandfather looked at me for along moment. It seemed as if he was trying to decide something. What he should tell me. Looking back now with children of my own, I understand what he was thinking. Was I old enough to hear the truth? Would I understand. In the end he made the same choice I will one day have to make. And he told me.

Long ago, he said, back when I was young, we did live in places like this. We did not look at them with sadness either, or fond memories like those of us who remember them now do. Instead we took it for granted, took it as something we would always have. And we misused it greatly.

Once there were forests, groups of trees that stretched father than the eye could see. They covered the hills and the plains of the land, and we made our homes on the fringes of them.

But we did not respect them. We abused them. We tore down the forests for wood. We tore up the earth and made room for what we wanted. In the end the world felt all of it, for without the trees and earth, what home did we have?

Some tried to fix it. They planted trees, sowed grasses and tried to live better. But man could never compare to the truth of nature. And we saw it.

Fires raged massive and fierce. They tore through the planted forests. Insects devoured all the “benificial” trees people put in. It did no good to put trees in that didn’t belong. People didn’t see the truth until too late.

Our governments ran the forests like a business, and they destroyed it. They destroyed us. I remember the wars for trees for nature. I remember the great fires as they ravaged the country, and can still taste the smoke filling the air. In the end, we had no choice but to flee.

My grandfather never spoke of it again, but he gave me the picture to remember what he told me. Even now years later I still have it. The colors are faded, but you can see the trees, the grass. My children love looking at it, asking about it.

Someday I’ll tell them the truth. That the reason we live here is our own peoples fault. I wonder how they will take it?