The Logger's Confession

A Poem/Commentary

For years now, there have been massive thefts of white oak trees from private property and public lands around the Southeast (particularly in Tennessee) that get laundered into cooperages for manufacturing whiskey barrels—legally, bourbon must be aged in new charred oak barrels, and white oak is preferred for its mild flavor notes. Because the trees grow so slowly, demand for bourbon is outpacing natural replenishment rates of these forest giants, and rogue loggers are getting more and more bold. The most recent incident includes government collusion with a Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency staff member getting fired for turning a blind eye to theft of oaks from state land in exchange for trail clearing work.

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Stealing a tree is not the easiest.
It tends to make a bit of noise.
Because of that, people ignore me.
When they hear a chainsaw, they don’t flinch.
Work goes on, and no one thinks to ask
Whether or not a contract was signed
Or a landowner duly paid.
By the time anyone notices
A new hole in the canopy,
It’s long gone—pieced out—and so am I.

Besides, who really misses a tree?
They grow like weeds in these Southern hills.
Where I take one out, fifty or more 
Will be growing by this time next year.
Hell, they come up in my yard—damn squirrels—
If I forget to mow for a week.
Far better to thin them out a bit
And give a few to a nobler cause.
You can’t oak-age fine bourbon without
Cracking into some fine aged white oak.

Really, they ought to be thanking me
For keeping their whiskey flowing cheap.
I don’t make the rules about what counts
As bourbon or rye or what have you.
It’s not my fault any used barrel
Will do to cure a Glenmorangie
Or Lagavulin to sell top-shelf
While you need me and my saw-by-night
To make twelve bucks on Jim Beam white.
Idols demand living sacrifice.

To be honest, it’s getting harder
To find someone who’ll take a nice bribe,
Or a cut of profit, and harder
To find a mill to cut out the staves.
Besides, I did the work all myself—
Cutting, hauling, selling. Stealing? Me?
Did they plant these trees eighty years back?
Whose land was it really anyway?
I’m just gleaning gifts of the forest
Like a handful of berries or nuts.

So that’s my story, for what it’s worth.
I don’t think it’s all that bad, do you?
I only came to tell you all this
Because the voices inside my head—
The ones that sound like wind in white oak leaves
And whisper of a flourishing world
Where death is not required to drink—
Want me to speak out their memory
And breathe sweet, earthy scents from my pores
As I drown my shame in their last essence.