Should Common Land and its trees be owned by the privileged few or the people?

Trees on Common Land

Immeasurably heavy decibels
Shaking the earth with throat thick hands of night.
Bone-white, the motorway is out of sight,
Rattling the moon’s shield brightly as it dulls
The owl’s cry: multi-axles, running down
Blackness with squirts of headlight foam, flooding
And extinguishing stars, still flickering
Like diamonds on a dark velvet gown.
Hemming the fields, elf-high mist levitates,
Hovering, bowing low, preparing dawn
Before Corsican pines. These refugees:
Transported, driven from their homeland states;
Forced against the native oak, hacked and sawn,
Not asking, which road brings us to our knees?

Derrick Gaskin

This poem first seen in The Common Women,by Derrick Gaskin, published by Downlander. ISBN 0-906369-24-X.