the deepening ground

Personally, I love the look of gabion retaining walls, but the work of filling them can be exhausting. We had a lot of bricks and old paving stones to begin the process, leaving the nicer looking landscape rocks for the visible sides. But when you have nearly twenty-two feet of gabions that are thirty-nine inches tall, it demands a lot of rock! Thankfully, I have some local leads for scrap cinder blocks to serve as fill, but we’ve gone to the creek to find those fun-shaped stones that will be visible when you look at the gabions. (I’ll include pictures of our progress after the poem – the images go from the current state to the original excavation of the area in preparation for the gabions)

In my most recent visit to Wolf Creek, I noticed multiple young trees down on the opposite bank. Towards the end of the summer, I remember hearing an electric chainsaw from across the creek where some kids tend to roam. When I went exploring, I found multiple young trees just cut and dropped without any rhyme or reason: perfectly healthy young trees. It’s been nearly two months now, and they remain where they fell, their leaves prematurely browning. It aggravated me and inspired the following poem.

Harvest and Destruction

By Vincent H. Anastasi 2024

Late summer leaves defiantly green.
I'm drawn to Wolf Creek
to harvest stone from the fluid fields
for my retaining wall.
My sudden arrival startles
the heron into flight;
I watch him wing his way
downstream and then I dig
with my fingers in the sediment,
silt collecting beneath my nails,
unearthing rocks like giant potatoes,
flipping them over in the stream
to wash the loose dirt away.

My hands wear dry against
the sandstone, brick, and concrete debris
that tide-like I bear across the creek,
tossing them up the embankment
to the foot of my backyard
where my son and neighbor wait
to load the riding-mower trailer
with my rugged bounty,
each piece leaving the creek
to travel to my back door
to fill the empty gabions:
a caged cobbled wall set against
the erosive effect of water.

But on the further bank
I discover the felled trees,
trunks no thicker than my fist,
not the carnage of some sudden storm
nor the inevitable result
of gravity's relentless pull
on the sodden feet of a top-heavy ancient oak
desperately clinging to the bank.
No beaver patiently gnawed his way
to the pithy core, leaving a pointed stump.
This tree fell victim to unthinking teeth:
an electric chainsaw in ignorant hands.
A purposeless kill

not intended for shelter
nor hauled away, cut, and split
as provision against future cold.
Just dropped, headfirst into shallow waters,
the leaves drowned or drying up
severed from the good earth.
I grow indignant, not mad;
I can tell a hawk from a handsaw.
But I cannot let it rest.
I leave the creek and travel to my back door
to fill the empty pages:
a cobbled memorial set against
the erosive effect of thoughtlessness.