Breathes there a man with a soul so dead
His faith is not shaken nor stirred
By the black swamp-blood that beats within these words?
Deep within the mighty bog oaks
Burke Holder never spoke
A word in prayer ere he harvested his trees,
As the bleeding sap soaked the fallen leaves.

Doubling back before his deed was done
He left scars in the bark like rings.
He’d hacked their knotty hides to smithereens.
He turned to face the sun
But their shadows overcome
Like the broken fingers of an up-jumped, beaten slave
Growing tighter till his heartlight choked away.

Keeping God up all night, begging for mercy
No mercy was all he found.
Strange angels sang while curtains fell around.
“Simple Stewardship you’ve failed,
Blast the lumberhorns of Hell
While buzzards bray their rackety refrain.
This man has made no mark, he’s left a stain.”

O come all ye hunters who follow the gun,
Beware of your wasteful ways!
Or soon you’ll be lyin’ in the clay of the earth you hate.
For those who enter his haunted woods
Lose their way, it’s understood;
Emerging in the morning to a new dawn’s early light,
But a whole, damn live-long year has passed them by.

Timber! Dark Timber...in the wilds of the Deadening.