By Melissa A. Chappell
(For the 800,000 people who perished in the Rwandan genocide of 1994)
I am a Eucalyptus tree.
For a hundred years I have stood here
with my roots pressed in this Rwandan earth.
They reach down
deep,
deep into the underworld,
where life is not,
and the dead
flee away.
.
My branches reach
high,
high into the heavens,
where there is
no wrong,
and death
flees away.
.
But I dwell on earth,
and what I have seen!
What I have seen!
The rain was blood
for my shamed roots,
and loathing myself,
I was made rich
by rotting flesh,
flesh that
no one claimed
because they, too,
had disappeared
into oblivion.
.
Come, Mercy, come!
Lay an axe to my trunk.
Butcher my wood
as they did the people
to whom I once
gave shade.
Set me ablaze.
Make me a holocaust
to the heavens.
Let me burn!
May my holy essence
float across
these thousand hills
.
so that none may
be forgotten,
so that none may
be forgotten.
.
Come, Mercy, come!
Let me burn.
.
Melissa A. Chappell is a native of South Carolina living on land passed down through her family for over 120 years. She is greatly inspired by the land and music. She plays several instruments, among them an 8 course Renaissance lute. She shares her life with her family and two miniature schnauzers. She recently published Dreams in Isolation: The World in Shadow: Poems of Reconciliation and Hope with Alien Buddha Press.
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