(Lihue, Kauai)

There’s no way to know how big
it was, how many slender trunks
twined themselves together,

a massive aerial root system
sending strands of itself earthward
to prop up what became

George Wilcox’s exceptional
banyan. Almost 130 years after
he planted what must have

been a slender shoot, we walk
into the jungle behind our
temporary digs to find a plaque

on a boulder praising the tree
behind it that decade after decade,
spread its adventurous roots

like a giant umbrella, morphing
into a huge grove, a single tree
transformed into its own

ecosystem for uncountable
numbers of birds and insects,
connected to infinite

generations of descendants.
Now we stand blinking into light
that should have been blocked

by the exceptional banyan,
stunned to see a vast swath
of open ground surrounded

by the detritus of hacked-up
trunks and limbs—
a great elephant defiled,

an arboristic treasure looted.
We think of the famous
Lahaina banyan that so many

have labored to save after
fire consumed that town.
Here stood its equally

magnificent cousin,
now an intentionally ruined
remnant of its former self.

We sigh with sadness,
photograph what’s left,
astonished by humans

who can in one moment
do something so thoughtful
and in another

wound a long-lived ancestor
with such short-sighted
thoughtlessness.