“You may be assured planning approval for this project includes strategies to minimise its impact on existing vegetation and the environment.”
– Minister for Transport and Infrastructure
It never ends, this extinction of the planet, until it ends.
Yes, there is outrage. We wrote letters, signed petitions
attended rallies and demos, reinvented ourselves on xerox.
On Valentine’s Day we sent a floral heart
to that tin man, our Premier
but the answer came back the same:
two trees to be planted for every small tree removed,
eight for every “significant” tree, to arrive on trucks
bulk delivered, for mass plantings, silhouetting
a pre-determined landscape.
Will they be Moreton Bays, eucalypts, Port Jackson Figs
or designer trees, fast-growing patio plants
(preferably not native) to break up the ugliness
of railway tracks and concrete high-rise? Few of us
will be here to see the outcome, stand in vanishing shade,
breathe thinner oxygen, in a photosynthesis
more intricate than lungs.
Phantom trees like shadowy stage-props
burgeoning at the edges of their minds.