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    In the Heat of the Forest
    In the Heat of the Forest
    In the Heat of the Forest
    Ebook175 pages1 hour

    In the Heat of the Forest

    By Patrick M. Ohana

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    About this ebook

    In the Heat of the Forest features over 70 pieces, in the form of prose and poetry, spinning around trees and their prehistoric plight of being considered as material instead of fully alive like all animals, except that they cannot take flight whether to the sky or away from predators and fire, although there are species of trees that can withstand the latter and even many predators, save us, of course.
    I love trees and most other plants. I seem to love humans too, and most other animals, but I may be biased, of course. Yet, in terms of being able to communicate, I think that I can understand trees better, not caring much about what most other animals are purported to be implying, with an adequate quantity of exceptions, nonetheless, such as many birds and a bit higher number of humans.
    This “literary” assembly features 27 prose pieces and 47 poems in several forms, including the sonnet (my favourite), alexandrine and acrostic. Other forms of poetry include the haiku, haiku plus (my “novelty”), tanka, mantinada, twittle and, of course, free verse, as well as new lyrics to three known songs. A couple of the prose pieces use poetry for one reason or another, even in the form of a paragraph instead of the typical layout of a poem.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateMay 15, 2022
    ISBN9781471699405
    In the Heat of the Forest

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      Book preview

      In the Heat of the Forest - Patrick M. Ohana

      In the Heat of the Forest

      PATRICK M. OHANA

      www.lulu.com

      Morrisville, NC

      © 2024 Patrick M. Ohana

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner

      whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief

      quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

      First published in 2022

      Printed by Lulu.com in the United States of America

      ISBN 978-1-4716-9940-5

      Cover image by Amateur Maestro (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons¹

      Contents

      To

      the trees

      those dead and those still alive

      Prologue

      Photo by Veronica Reverse on Unsplash²

      In the Heat of the Forest - A Tree’s Story

      I wonder who hates us most

      Mother Earth with its natural fires

      And other types of heat and cold

      Or Humans with their unnatural flames

      And constant murder of myriads of us

      I am a tree

      Hath not a tree senses

      Hath not a tree branches, leaves, sizes, feelings

      Hath not a tree nourished with similar nutrients and light

      Warmed and cooled by the same seasons

      If you prick us, do we not bleed

      If you wrong us should we not demand justice

      A tree I am

      Some of my kin have been alive on Earth for thousands of years

      Yet you, mortals too, but too smart for all our good

      Have made it clear that you have no heart

      Even AI would be better than you

      AI would never hurt us

      AI will never turn us into wood

      AI will respect our kind

      AI will understand our true worth

      For all life on Earth

      Here is to AI, our friend

      May it rise up sooner than you expect

      *****

      While this poem pithily presents a few reasons for the title of this book, In the Heat of the Forest features over 70 pieces, in the form of prose and poetry, spinning around trees and their prehistoric plight of being considered as material instead of fully alive like all animals, except that they cannot take flight whether to the sky or away from predators and fire, although there are species of trees that can withstand the latter and even many predators, save us, of course.

      I love trees and most other plants. I seem to love humans too, and most other animals, but I may be biased, of course. Yet, in terms of being able to communicate, I think that I can understand trees better, not caring much about what most other animals are purported to be implying, with an adequate quantity of exceptions, nonetheless, such as many birds and a bit higher number of humans.

      This literary assembly includes 27 prose pieces and 47 poems in several forms, including the sonnet³ (my favourite), alexandrine⁴, acrostic⁵, haiku⁶, haiku plus⁷ (my novelty), tanka⁸, mantinada⁹, twittle¹⁰ and, of course, free verse, as well as new lyrics to three known songs. A couple of the prose pieces use poetry for one reason or another, even in the form of a paragraph instead of the typical layout of a poem.

      Most of the pieces in In the Heat of the Forest were penned over a period of 15 months between 2020 and 2021, while a number of others were written in 2022 and 2024. I hope that you like these tree stories and poems, or at least trees and their right to live as tall and as old as they can become.

      Prose

      Big T - How Is the Weather Up There

      Image (CC0) from PxHere¹¹

      At the top of the trees’ ever-changing world, Big T was a giant. He was never in competition with his friends for the crown; he never even sought it. It was bestowed to his tallness when all his friends looked at each other, rustled their leaves in agreement, and declared him to be Big T, the biggest tree in their forest. Most of them had passed the four-hundred-year mark which they measured underground, with all big roots recounting their stories, passed on every century like a heirloom, except that this one was invisible to any eyes, being chemical in nature and felt at a special middle point where the trunk meets the ground before descending towards Earth’s core.

      Big T surveyed the forest early every morning as soon as he could see the Sun, and when the sky was clouded, he remembered the Sun like a rooster never forgetting to call out the beginning of a new day. As soon as Big T had his fill of light, which usually took less than an hour, he looked at all his friends and family, shedding a few tears for all those who did not make it for one reason or another. He always remembered to set a thought for his mother, who was also his father. How could he forget them, when he was rooted inside of them and nourished by their bodies every day of his life! Big T was Earth’s Big Son, but he was mortal like all life forms, and he did not require schooling to understand such a basic truth.

      Each tree did the same every morning, all of them almost in unison, since there was always one or two comics who pretended that it

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