Young or Old...Choices

The Woodcutter Changes His Mind

by David Budbill

When I was young, I cut the bigger, older trees for firewood, the ones
with heart rot, dead and broken branches, the crippled and deformed

ones, because, I reasoned, they were going to fall soon anyway, and
therefore, I should give the younger trees more light and room to grow.

Now I'm older and I cut the younger, strong and sturdy, solid
and beautiful trees, and I let the older ones have a few more years

of light and water and leaf in the forest they have known so long.
Soon enough they will be prostrate on the ground.

"The Woodcutter Changes His Mind" by David Budbill, from While We've Still Got Feet: New Poems. © Copper Canyon Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission
This was in my box earlier this week. It led to me to thinking how our minds lead us to these complicated choices that are really not our choices at all. A forest is an ecosystem of young and old,wild and timid, raw and ripe, weak and strong, just like us. I think cutting down trees is necessary to keep us warm , to build us shelter, chairs to sit on ,beds to sleep on, tables to eat on. I guess it is inevitable that we would have to choose which tree to cut down for own purposes, ...young or old, in reality we do choose, choices allow us freedoms, but also responsibility, a need to pause in thoughtfulness.