Day’s end under the spreading trees

Twilight glimmers beneath shadowed leaves

Entwined with the branches, now they emerge

Forest spirits, singing a dirge

Dryads dance in a moonlit glade

Remains of the dead ones around them displayed

Stumps remain of their murdered kin

Nothing left of the spirits within

Their numbers grow fewer every day

As loggers cart the bodies away

Their purpose is spent, they wail in dread

As they wait to be numbered along with the dead.

Til the last dryad howls her grief to the sky

in a forest of stumps, waiting to die.