The path that doesn’t belong

What I will miss most are the bird
songs
They are wordless yet wiser than I
will ever be
They belong here long beyond when
you and I are dust and yet—
Ideals are gone so hastily, how easy
to pay a man to drive a dozer,
to make rows through forest miles,
straight lines
where they don’t belong, scarring
paradise by
the sawing, the cutting, and then
the lighting
and the burning, the blazing, the
torching destruction that doesn’t
belong—
What I will miss most is the song
of a bird
Gone down the path that doesn’t
belong—when
men were flogged into claiming a
Paycheck
instead of a future of smiles and
song