Case of the Missing Tree

I am on a mission. I must recover the trees. They’ve gone missing in my neighborhood. It’s my number one pet peeve…. Yes, I’ve got a long list of them (honestly, I wouldn’t be a New Yorker if it wasn’t long). Trees are being chopped down as if we all lived in some forest. I’ve been given many possible reasons from the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, Forestry Division. They tell me it could be disease, beetle nesting, obstruction, improper growth, etc… Something tells me they don’t really know. Instead of these cats extracting the root, they chop them at the limb. Most inhumane. I stand in front of a stump on my block sometimes to inspect what’s left. A solid mass of patterns, rings, and memories. The root claws into a patch of dirt and concrete as if it had felt the pain of her execution. Cold bloody murderers! Yet, those very same claws were lifelines once. What’s worse is that the tree has not been replaced, which was supposed to happen in March/April – tree planting season, thereby allowing it to regenerate and all other living things. The Department asked me to call back in August after they've conducted an investigation or as they call it, “a survey.” Hopefully, a new tree will be planted soon. I asked if they could check out 8 other stumps I found around the way, but was told that I can only report one. One tree on the block of a neighborhood in a careless city full of missing trees. There’s something wrong with this system, but I'll find a way around it. I’ll never stop until I make things right, kid. That’s my mission

(light up cigarette, pull fedora down, lift collar up, cross my street, and fade to black).