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      May 18, 2021ClearcuttingTriin Paja

      in Latvia, a charcoal wolf,
      with fur like smoke,
       
      rescues her cubs
      bundled under felled trees,
       
      masked in the emerald potsherds
       
      from trees tall as lighthouses,
      now stumps, marred root, nest dust.
       
      one by one, she carries
      her children, grasping them
       
      gently with her young-moon teeth.
       
      she could be a silver-haired mother
      digging for her children
       
      in a bombed city.
       
      the wind is the largest room
      she knows
       
      and it is growing.

      from Poets Respond

      Triin Paja

      “In Latvia, a man operating a harvester films a wolf saving her offspring from under felled trees and rubbish. I live in Estonia, which neighbors Latvia, and deforestation is becoming a wider issue each year, both here and there, and it is not rare to read news about barren and confused (and, at times, rare) animals amidst deforestation. There is a deepening fear and anxiety in us, as our small countries, hailed for their old forests and wildlife, follow the route of many other European countries, which leads to forests stripped bare and much of the wildlife gone extinct. Already, in my own poetry expressing this anxiety, I discern that it is not anxiety alone: it is also grief.”

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