Part 5) advice as an end to itself:

assimilation -
is chain and teeth,
still spinning.

Part 4) no place for you here:

at times, a well disguised birch
will slip in among the pine,
take the dirt road
back to the city.

try to live the good life
amidst the cracks
and hustle-bustle.

Part 3) displaced (burning):

along with the fallen, the unwanted.

those which get in the way,
birch and poplar mostly -
if said to have a milled value
of less then the cost to get’em out -
stay behind.
eventually meeting the same fate
as all the other
inconvenient trees.

Part 2) the fallen trees:

having never been exposed
to a full, blustering wind
these trees are ill-equipped
to face the coming storms.

they won’t be trucked or milled, these trees …
they will be stacked and burned -
when the ground is hard and the adjacent stumpage
is padded with snow.

Part 1) and if i had his compassion:

a northern cutblock,
nestled into folds of old growth tree-line.
taught and rearing this place
is separated from the hustle-bustle
of city life by mountains,
by policy and intent, intenders
hell-bent.

here the tailings of last winter
still linger. holding on,
the newly exposed timber
pushes against the wind,
pulling at the knurled roots below.
heaving the boreal landscape
inward.