Dear Editor,

It is with sadness that I read of the fallen flamboyant at Mile 50. Belize is blessed with many varieties of beautiful tropical trees.  If we would only nurture and care for them, we would become a special attraction for the world.

The colonial masters raped our forests of our mighty giants and did not think of planting them back. We got rid of the chains of colonialism and then we finished off the forest.

During the Second World War, the British, who knew that our men hunted and fell giants in British Honduras, took them overseas and named them the forestry unit.

It is time that we start planting and caring for our trees. To some, they just take up space and cause dirt. A past mayor, in a few hours, cut down all the beautiful trees from the central park to lay a slab of concrete for people to skate.

Above  is a beautiful poem I learned in primary school.

TREES
by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree
A tree whose hungry mouth
Is pressed, against the earth’s
Sweet flowing breast
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray
A tree that may in summer wear, a nest of robins in her hair
Upon whose bosom snow has lain
Who intimately lives with rain
Poems are made by fools like me
But only God can make a tree.

(Lyric poetry Feb. 1913)
Alfonso de la Cruz Ramirez, SR., J. P.

(Ed. NOTE: This beautiful poem was also immortalized in a song, of similar name, by a number of great artists, including The Platters, a famous band of “yesteryear,” who did a lovely job.)