k'lid k'iyass

        No white man was certain of its age.
        The K'lid K'iass had been revered among the Haida people for generations. It was a Sitka spruce devoid of chlorophyll, hence its boughs of gold. Believed to be the only one of its kind in the forest, the Old Tree was a thing of divine mystery. So the elders taught.
        Its spirit resided in all of them. Sacred in thought, word, and deed.
        Then one night someone murdered it.
        Word of the crime reached Lotus Land school. Artie heard one story.


        A crazed jobless logger motored his outboard toward tribal land. His mind seethed with hatred for all things Eco Green. Fuck the Indians, fuck the Hippies, fuck the Communists, and fuck  the RCMP in their Smokey Bear hats! He beached upon the island and stole into the woods. Within a few hours the K'lid K'iass had been cut down.
        On the way back he polished off a pint of Canadian Mist and tossed the bottle into the ebon waters, all the while shouting obscenties to the dark moon.


                                                                                     *


        Kelly found him shirtless and shoeless, weeping upon the Emerald Lea.
        "Mister Artie, please. Please be all right."
        His soul had been sundered with the force of a well-tempered axe. He sobbed, "Oh, my poor Haida."
        (Ironically, the Haida had for ages been a scourge from the primeval  Queen Charlotte Islands. Slave traders whose Viking-swift raids ranged from California to Asia, they were by no means pitied by less aggresive tribes in British Columbia.)
        Artie's lean rugged body reminded Kelly of aspen logs, white with odd blemishes. She wondered if he bruised easily.
        Supine with an arm draped across his face, he grieved, unaware of her presence. She placed a small simian hand upon his left nipple. Smooth and flat as river stones his chest galvanized at her touch.
        "Kelly. Dear Kelly."
        His eyes were whirlpools of uncertainty and they frightened her.
        Tugging mightily, she brought him to his feet. After a deep breath he said, "I'm all right."
        Once again he stood as her stalwart defender. Her teacher.
        Yet he smiled painfully as his spirit hemorraged. Gazing upon her through lidded eyes he appeared to her like dying Lord Jesus in a Russian Icon. Dew glistened in his monkish beard.
        She led him by the hand toward his domicile, with its little square Tibetan prayer flags.


                                                                                       *


        Kelly sat crosslegged on his futon. "So this where you crash."
        He handed her a mug of hot cider. The alcohol caused her to wrinkle her elfin nose. Suddenly she bolted up and began touring his private room, touching mementos and scrutinizing each and every photograph.
        "Who is this woman?"
        "Someone from long ago. When I worked at the Whitney. We both loved art, and we were quite close."
        "What happened?"
        "She went back to France."
        "Why?"
        Kelly could be persistant as a child. With a sigh he surrendered the truth. "For a while we were lovers. Then she grew bored."
       

                                                                              *


        "Ooh, this you?" Pointing at a snapshot of Schwartzbart.
        "Ho ho. Yeah, that's me. I was a Sikh."
        "You were sick?"


        Did he really wish to explain it all?
        About Kirpal Singh. Naam. The Ruhani Satsang. And the day the Master visited New York.
        Passing with entourage, Master Singh glanced into the crowd of selects and captured Artie's
eyes in a divine moment. A darshan. It healed mind and soul. Inexplicable.


        "What about some coffee?" Artie hoped to redirect Kelly from his past lives.
        "Just had cider."
        "Oh, that's right."
        She picked up the can of Chock-Full-Of-Nuts. "Look, it still shows the World Trade Center."


                                                                                *


        A lone cicada whirred beneath a sylvan moon.
        Artie sat on the verandah in a hickory rocking chair. His thoughts drifted aloft like faceless seraphim.
        Kelly Alabama sat beside him like a Kickapoo hausfrau. Crosslegged upon the planking.
        What more could he ask for?


                                                                                 *


        Then God explained to Artie exactly what had happened.
        There was this college boy on summer furlough. His job was to climb a tree and saw off its top. After the boughs fell crashing to the forest floor, he surveyed things from his perch.
        An axe man below shook his head and muttered, "Damn dreamy chucklehead is gonna get one of us killed."
        One day it occured to the dreamy college boy that a fresh clearing resembled the epicenter of that meteor strike in Siberia.
        A Pauline conversion took place.
        With a Pentacostal flame burning within his skull, he walked off the job. His mission: save the woodlands of Britsh Columbia.
        And his name now was Elijah Hazzard.


        His vision was true.
        The Golden Spruce was everybody's pet plant. A mutant tree. Sacred now as the cow in India. Not to be touched. Thus it would be the perfect sacrifice. Slain upon the altar of environmental conservation. Its death would ignite a firestorm of outrage. The logging industry would finally reap the whirlwind!


        Ottersplash. Elijah Hazzard slipped into the cold water and left the boat at anchor. He abided the cold shock to his system. Even in a wetsuit his genitals shrank into absentia. He swam toward the island. Bound in a watertight black plastic sheath was a lightweight chainsaw, strapped to his back like a broadsword.
        He cut the tree badly, but did not saw through it.
        Mortally wounded, the K'lid K'iyass fell three days later.