Sonnet

Stolen Green Gifts

By: Zhanna McAtee

One hundred-year-old wine served to a new,
inexperienced alcohol virgin.
Heaven’s gates as they open up to you
dazzle your mind beyond comprehension.
More treasured than gold, more valued than flight,
rarer than diamonds. Cache seems unfailing.
Yet it fades faster than shadows in light.
Greed used to destroy beauty prevailing.
Cruel fates allow trees to disappear like
ripples in a stream with a mile-wide girth.
Each saw blade and truck an accursed strike
against nature’s green gifts that grace our Earth.
How long will the killing of forests last?
Agony for life, death records of past.

“One hundred-year-old wine served to a new,
inexperienced alcohol virgin.”

This line is a metaphor for the under appreciation of the wild. Beauty is wine, but the forest is the most valuable wine in the world. It’s 100 years old, and it’ll take 100 years for wine of the same caliber to be created after that one is drunk and gone. We will all be dead before the date of 100 years from now arrives. We, humans, see the wine, we drink in the wine, we deplete the sources of the rarest wine, and we cannot appreciate it to its full extent, because we are new, inexperienced alcohol virgins and we have nothing of lesser value to compare it to. We know it is good quality, but we do not have the ability to comprehend how delicious this rare wine is.

“Heaven’s gates as they open up to you
dazzle your mind beyond comprehension.”

            This line is another metaphor for humans being unable to understand the value of the forest. We, as mere mortals, cannot even begin to think about how wondrous heaven is. None of us have ever been there, and those who have can’t come back and tell us about it, and even if they could, we don’t have words that could possible describe heaven to its full justice. The forest is heaven on Earth, and it has opened its gates graciously and welcomingly to our lives.

“More treasured than gold, more valued than flight,
rarer than diamonds.”

            This line compares other wonders of the world to the forest. It says that the forest is much better than gold, diamonds and the power of flight. These three things are a few of the greatest desires humans can comprehend. So, by comparing the forest to something humans can understand and wish for, at least the reader can begin to see that the forest is absolutely astounding and amazing.

“Cache seems unfailing.
Yet it fades faster than shadows in light.
Greed used to destroy beauty prevailing.”

            These lines state that we like to think that the forest will be around forever, and it seems like it, but in reality, as our greed for pieces of the forest destroys it bit by bit, the trees are disappearing faster than we realize. Our ugly greed for wood and trees is destroying a beauty we have no right to touch.

“Cruel fates allow trees to disappear like
ripples in a stream with a mile-wide girth.
Each saw blade and truck an accursed strike
against nature’s green gifts that grace our Earth.”

            These four lines state that deforestation is happening quickly, like the way ripples submerge into wide bodies of water. Humans use saws and trucks and other ugly, yet efficient machinery to cruelly destroy beauty that was given to us by Mother Nature.

“How long will the killing of forests last?
Agony for life, death records of past.”

            These last two lines question how long it will be until the world completely exhausts the resources, and wonders how long forests will be able to survive. It also sums up that killing trees is cruel, and that we have been doing this in the past for too long. It should obviously be stopped.

            All in all, this sonnet was written to make the readers realize that greater actions must be taken to protect innocent, beautiful trees before it is too late, and that date of “too late” is much sooner than we think and/or realize.