Streams of sunlight pierce the limbs of a rainforest canopy.

1 square kilometer of rainforest (.62 square miles) hosts hundreds of different kinds of trees. The oldest lives for three and a half thousand years. Thousands of animals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, butterflies, and insects, live in this one square kilometre of rainforest.

. . .

12 square kilometres of rainforest (7.45 square miles) will be lost to deforestation in the next twenty four hours. 12 X 1. Today. This day. 

Imagine walking seven miles from where you are right now. In one day, on every day, everything that you see stretching either side of you as you walk is lost.

After one week 84 square kilometres is gone (52.15 square miles). It is impossible to imagine this level of ongoing destruction humans are wholly responsible for, and so it is forgotten or ignored by individuals, and by states. For profit, convenience, and power. Humans have the capacity to easily forget what seems not to negatively affect them directly or immediately.

Each and every human can affect the world positively. Each of us has the opportunity and choice about what, when, and how we consume, what we waste, and our care of living things beyond our line of sight.

The poem below is written from the point of view of a tree in a rainforest, and calls for an end to human indifference.

. . .

Ending My Life

I stand

Tall as the sound of chain and choke draws near

I live

Five thousand seasons long

With teaming life

With rain and sun on earth in cloud

Thick smoke and crack of falling tree draws near

Be now with me

You countless lives that feed and share my home of heavy stem that reaches high

Be safe with me

Look there

Below

A man with howling saw looks up and breathes the scent of ancient moss

And with that breath he stops the shriek of cut

This life these lives remain alive

His choice to make in every way as real as yours this day

Far from the choke and chain

Be change and changed that life has yet the chance for love to stay

. . .

ORIGINATOR · Mike de Sousa

ART FORM · Environmental Art and Poetry

COMPLETED · 29 December 2025

Free to enjoy. Copyright maintained. Not to be used for ai or commercial gain.