on reckoning, the trees

how strange to think
that trees could be the
cause of so much pain.
in the beginning, there was
only grass and sky, the
buffalo and the people of
the prairie. displaced
is too nice a way to say it,
when genocide would be a
more accurate term. in a word,
we bear witness, the almost
guilt I feel at being here,
now, enjoying the cottonwoods
cotton, from trees now