This morning on my way to work I saw a corpse. No, not a human corpse, but the body of a tree cut into uneven stumps in the middle of the street. It’s structure was dismembered, branches and stumps scattered and tossed. Its leaves were still emerald, in sharp contrast to its rough-hewn bark. Its body bled amber sap. The crime scene made me stop in my tracks and try to imagine who would be so callous as to destroy something so innocent yet majestic.
I pictured the saws that tore it down, devoid of sight and feeling. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t visualize the human beings that operated those weapons of mass destruction, falling a being that had no doubt existed longer than any of the transient residents of this nondescript block in Queens. My shock turned to anger, then to an overwhelming sense of sadness - perhaps some of what grief counselors had repeatedly told me were some of the different stages of mourning. I never could quite remember the order in which they are supposed to occur.
Approaching closer, I noticed the remnants of nests in the branches. Tiny, seemingly haphazard things built of string and twigs and other such discarded items that industrious birds turned into homes. I wondered if any of these nests contained eggs, and how many had died as the tree fell. Did the robots that ripped this organism once pulsating with life apart realize that they were making refugees of its inhabitants? Where would these birds go now, when the flew back to find the dwellings they had industriously created for themselves destroyed? Do birds pick up and move on to the next tree, build another home, as people do when their lives are rendered topsy-turvy by circumstances so unforeseen?
I wanted to hug the stumps of the tree, to reassure it that at least one person would not forget it. Perhaps there exists a universe or dimension in which creatures such as trees can here and feel. I had the urge to say a prayer for it, and wished I knew some Hebrew so I could recite kaddish. All that came to mind were phrases from the Lord’s Prayer that my grandmother had mouthed solemnly in the Catholic church we used to go to as I watched, wishing I could be as enraptured as she by Sunday Mass.
As I walked away, late for work as usual, I wondered how many more years the tree would have survived had it escaped what seemed such a horrific fate. Would it have died a natural death? What was a natural death for a tree, anyway? I haven’t a clue. It must be the same way any living thing dies, really - either its insides, its bits and pieces, slowly and inevitably succumb, or it meets an untimely end due to a storm or to the myopic beings and structures that consider another home or development or concrete playground more valuable. And just as those who grieve for loved ones lose part of their homes, part of the structure of the lives they have created and built, so do the birds lose their nests. The branches that housed their homes are filaments, their outward structure belying the fragility within.
