My daughter, a junior at Belmont High School, showed me this poem she had written in defense of saving the Belmont Uplands silver maple forest:

'green genocide'

screaming forest
protesting trees
tearing underbrush.
the tears come
flowing floods
it will not stop.
thousands of homeless flee the dark rumbling:
a perfect storm of blades
of saws
of cruelty.
a green genocide.
look at what you’ve done.
you’ve made the forests scream
and now the tears will not stop.
-AKA

Perhaps our ZBA and the Board of Selectmen will take heed. Darrell J. King Long Avenue