Salvage This Jerry Martien

This poem needs to be saved from itself. It is way over the hill. Words on dead wood. Long ago it ceased to be profitable. You would be keeping it from being taken by its own dark and useless powers. There are words in here over a thousand years old. They have conspired with other creatures and been spoken with air that has been inside the leaves of trees. These words when spoken are an ancient forest. Some of the words they say are no longer productive. Truth.  Love. Compassion for all beings. Hey -- call the operators. Haul them away to the mill. But say -- isn't that a trace of human wisdom in among those words? And down there isn't that a vole digging for buried meaning in the decay and duff of a culture that long ago knew how to say, Enough -- don't be taking what you haven't created and can't pay back. There is blood here. An owl is eating the vole. There is life here. These words are inside the trees again. What happens to our words happens to the forest. What happens to the forest happens to us. We should be cutting lies instead of trees.