If trees could speak

Humans do not see trees.

They walk by us every day.

They sit and sleep, smoke and picnic,

and secretly kiss in our shade.

They pluck our leaves
and gorge on our fruits.

They break our branches

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

And wow, eternal love.

They weave necklaces out of our needles

and paint our flowers into art.

They split us into logs
to heat their homes,

and sometimes they chop us down

just because they think
we obstruct their view.

They make cradles, wine
corks, chewing gum,

rustic furniture and produce
the most beautiful music

out of us.

And they turn us into books

in which they bury themselves
on cold winter nights.

They use our wood to manufacture coffins

in which they end their lives.

And they even compose the
most romantic poems for us,

claiming we're the link
between earth and sky.

And yet they do not see us.

So one of the many beauties
of the art of storytelling

is to imagine yourself
inside someone else's voice.

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

I believe we must also be
interested in silences.

The things we cannot talk
about easily in our societies,

the marginalized, the disempowered.

In that sense, literature
can, and hopefully does,

bring the periphery to the center,

make the invisible a bit more visible,

make the unheard a bit more heard,

and empathy and understanding speak louder

than demagoguery and apathy.

Stories bring us together.

Untold stories and entrenched
silences keep us apart.

But how to tell the stories
of humanity and nature

at a time when our planet is burning

and there is no precedent

for what we're about to
experience collectively

whether it's political,
social, or ecological.

But tell we must, because
if there's one thing

that is destroying our
world more than anything,

it is numbness.

When people become disconnected,
desensitized, indifferent,

when they stop listening,
when they stop learning,

and when they stop caring

about what's happening
here, there, and everywhere.

We measure time differently,
trees and humans.

Human time is linear.

A neat continuum, stretching from a past

that is deemed to be over and
done with, towards the future

that is supposed to be
pristine, untouched.

Tree time is circular.

Both the past and the future

breathe within the present moment.

And the present does not
move in one direction.

Instead it draws circles within circles,

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

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

because each of us whispers in the wind.

Look at us.

We're older than you and your kind.

Listen to what we have to tell,

because hidden inside
our story is the past

and the future of humanity.