A Thousand Yard Stare

June 22 2026

The lower branches

overshadowed by taller trees

were brittle as twigs

and dotted with blighted buds;

hard little nubs

that never opened.

A tree — sensible, if not sentient —

culls its weakest link

as it keeps reaching for the light.

Like cutting off the arm

you don’t write with,

starving the part of your brain

receptive to love

when you finally give up on it.

Hard to hug

with just one arm.

Oddly, the top was also dead.

A porcupine had girded the tree

of a section of bark,

throttling

its upper end

like a hand around the neck.

So just the middle still lived;

but to my eye

barely.

We cut it down

then bucked and split the wood

and stacked it for winter;

making the best

of a regrettable loss.

I’d say put it out of its misery,

but then

we’re told trees do not feel;

that they’re not sentient 

but simply are.

The life force

and its surprising toughness.

How a tree

reduced to a remnant

still strains for the sun,

and how a man 

fights to the last breath;

even on the verge

of certain death.

Or does he?

Because I’ve see that people do let go    . . . eventually.

Few rage until the end

die gracelessly.

The life force, as fierce as it is

resigns itself,

accepts,

goes peacefully enough.

A mercy indeed,

like a chainsaw to the heartwood

in a shower of chips

and matter of seconds.

Or like the antelope going limp 

in the jaws of a leopard,

its eyes 

glazed and fixed

in a thousand yard stare.

I can only hope

its violent death

is as painless as it looks.

This began with a real incident. One of my precious tamaracks. As always, where it went after that was completely unplanned.

I wonder if there is flood of endorphins at the moment struggle becomes futile. When I see prey being killed on nature docs, it always appears that way.  But then wonder how evolution — operating through the twin imperatives of reproduction and survival — could possibly select for this mercy. Because a killed animal doesn’t reproduce, so can’t pass anything on to its descendants. And because when death is inevitable, nothing benefits its survival. 

Instead of The life force / and its surprising toughness, I wanted to write in plain English  It’s hard to kill a man. Because it is. But thought such a statement might sound more like a confession: as if I’ve actually tried it!   . . . Anyway, the way the poem turned out, it didn’t really fit.

They say the electrical signals we’re able to detect in trees change predictably when they’re harmed or attacked. That they release pheromones, perhaps even inaudible (to us) sounds. None, of course, is evidence of subjective distress; that is, of feeling pain and emotional suffering. But they are suggestive, nevertheless. But is it even possible for us to contemplate consciousness in an organism so different that it lacks both a brain and a nervous system?

Coincidentally, I read this just a few hours ago:

Quebec town recognizes the rights of trees

The Globe and Mail (Ontario Edition)

22 Jun 2026

MORGAN LOWRIE

GRAHAM HUGHES/THE CANADIAN PRESS

A small town west of Montreal has decided to officially recognize trees as living beings with rights of their own, in what an environmental organization describes as a first in Quebec and Canada.

A resolution adopted by Terrasse-Vaudreuil city council on June 9 declares that trees are worthy of protection, “including the right to life, to natural growth, to integrity and to regeneration.”

Mayor Michel Bourdeau says Quebec filmmaker André Desrochers inspired the community to take action.

He said Mr. Desrochers’s film, called Des arbes et des arts convinced citizens that trees are living entities that live, breathe and communicate with each other through their root systems.

“A tree is like a human being,” Mr. Bourdeau said. “It breathes, it lives, it takes in water. It protects us from all sorts of things.”

The International Observatory of Nature Rights says the town of about 2,000 also became the first municipality in Quebec and Canada to sign on to the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Tree, which is an international initiative spearheaded by environment groups.

Its three main core articles state that trees are living beings and a common human good, that life on Earth depends on their existence, and that humans must act in “fraternity and solidarity” with them.

Mr. Bourdeau says the new resolution means the town will review its existing rules and bylaws to ensure that trees are protected or replaced, if they must be cut down. He also plans to implement measures to further increase the canopy, including offering trees for residents to plant.

“Trees are a true green infrastructure,” he said. “They help reduce urban heat islands, improve air quality, manage precious water resources and protect biodiversity.”

Mr. Bourdeau said the move was adopted unanimously by councillors, and appears popular with citizens as well. He also doesn’t anticipate it causing any problems, such as interfering with development, although that’s partly because the town has no more vacant land on which to build.

He says his town is a natural fit to become a tree ambassador. It’s built in the woods, and its citizens value a rural lifestyle. Its residents are also intimately aware of the damage caused by extreme weather and climate change, after being flooded three times in recent years.

When it comes to fighting climate change, “our biggest ally is the trees,” he said.

Yenny Vega Cardenas, the president of the International Observatory of Nature Rights, says the declaration on tree rights is part of the same push that has seen jurisdictions around the world, from New Zealand to Colombia, grant legal personhood to rivers and other natural areas.

It has also happened in Canada, where Quebec’s Magpie river was granted legal rights by a regional government and the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit in 2021.

But Ms. Vega Cardenas says the tree declaration is special because it acknowledges that a single tree is an ecosystem of its own, which can provide shade, food and habitat for other species.

“We need to understand that [trees] have dignity and they have senses,” she said. “Not sentiments, but senses … They can feel and they communicate with each other in a very specific way.”

Karine Péloffy, a lawyer with Ecojustice, described Terrasse-Vaudreuil’s decision as a “very hopeful gesture in the broader movement for the rights of nature,” and said the idea isn’t as strange as it might initially seem.

“We know corporations have legal personhood and rights and they are definitely not living,” she said in a phone interview. “So if some nonliving things can have legal personhood, what’s stopping living beings from equally getting legal personhood?”