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Humans do not see trees.

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They walk by us every day.

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They sit and sleep, smoke and picnic

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and secretly kiss in our shade.

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They pluck our leaves
and gorge on our fruits.

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They break our branches

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or carve their lover's name
on our trunks with their blades

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and vow eternal love.

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They weave necklaces out of our needles

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and paint our flowers into art.

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They split us into logs
to heat their homes,

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and sometimes they chop us down

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just because they think
we obstruct their view.

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They make cradles, wine corks,
chewing gum, rustic furniture

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and produce the most
beautiful music out of us.

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And they turn us into books

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in which they bury themselves
on cold winter nights.

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They use our wood to manufacture coffins
in which they end their lives.

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And they even compose
the most romantic poems for us,

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claiming we're the link
between earth and sky.

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And yet, they do not see us.

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So one of the many beauties
of the art of storytelling

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is to imagine yourself
inside someone else's voice.

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But as writers, as much as
we love stories and words,

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I believe we must also
be interested in silences:

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the things we cannot talk
about easily in our societies,

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the marginalized, the disempowered.

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In that sense, literature can,
and hopefully does,

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bring the periphery to the center,

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make the invisible a bit more visible,

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make the unheard a bit more heard,

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and empathy and understanding speak louder
than demagoguery and apathy.

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Stories bring us together.

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Untold stories and entrenched
silences keep us apart.

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But how to tell the stories
of humanity and nature

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at a time when our planet is burning

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and there is no precedent

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for what we're about
to experience collectively

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whether it's political,
social or ecological?

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But tell we must

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because if there's one thing

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that is destroying our world
more than anything,

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it is numbness.

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When people become disconnected,
desensitized, indifferent,

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when they stop listening,
when they stop learning

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and when they stop caring

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about what's happening
here, there and everywhere.

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We measure time differently,
trees and humans.

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Human time is linear --

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a neat continuum

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stretching from a past
that is deemed to be over and done with

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towards the future that is supposed
to be pristine, untouched.

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Tree time is circular.

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Both the past and the future
breathe within the present moment.

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And the present does not move
in one direction.

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Instead it draws circles within circles,

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like the rings you would find
when you cut us down.

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Next time you walk by a tree,
try to slow down and listen

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because each of us whispers in the wind.

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Look at us.

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We're older than you and your kind.

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Listen to what we have to tell,

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because hidden inside our story
is the past and the future of humanity.