I really appreciate the substance you have in this poem.  You deliver a very specific message in an eloquent way.  I feel, however, that this piece might have flowed better if you had simply written it as one or two paragraphs.  By chopping it up into short lines, I feel like you disrupt the train of thought for the reader.  In paragraph form, it would take on a speech-like quality that I think would add to your writing's emotional impact.

That was wonderful.  I'm an enviromentalist and a bit of an evolution theorist and 100% a tree hugger.  That touched me, and it was rather amusing if powerful as well.  It put us humans into the small perspective our big heads rarely notice.  The only thing was, what monkey bars have safety nets?  Climbing walls would have been better.

While there are some great ideas in this, I had a few problems with this poem. The first two stanzas feel a bit forced. It took me several times of reading them out loud to figure out a rhythm that worked, and I think that part of it is because of the lack of punctuation. I get that this piece is supposed to read with a sort of primative dialect, but I feel as though the primitive dialect could have been utilized and executed better to enhance the great ideas behind the piece. I love the idea of inventing fear of heights. I also really liked the last stanza, even though I haven't heard of any monkey bars with saftey nets. But the rhythm and line breaks work really well. The last three lines of "fine straight backs" were effective and powerful and helped tie the whole piece together by connecting to the beginning.

I love the ideas you have in this poem and the way you worded everything, but the format was kind of random. But I thought that overall the parallels were really clever and awesome.

I love the idea behind this poem. It has a very clear message that is accessible without losing any artistry or poetic individuality. I particularly like how you discuss logging equipment, acid rain, etc. without ever saying the specific words. Also, the idea that everything humans do being to move ourselves farther away from the "trees" (the trees, of course, being nature in general) was quite interesting to consider. There are, however, as previously stated, a few issues.

First, the monkey bars. I know of no monkey bars with safety nets, but I have seen many with rubber mats underneath them. You can make a simple substitution.

Next, the lack of punctuation is harmful in that it makes the rhythm unclear. If you are totally against adding punctuation, you could add more stanza breaks to help the reader to figure out the rhythm. For example, I think a break between the lines "first fire, then hard iron" and "we made tree poison" could be more effective.

I do like the line breaks. After all, most poetry is marked by line breaks. The line breaks in this poem seem to support the overall intent by making the rhythm jarring and off-kilter, as the theme is and should be conveyed.

Overall, well written! Just in need of some relatively minor editing...

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Thanks for the great comments, everyone -- they really helped.

Sorry about monkey bars not having nets -- I had just realized the irony of calling them "monkey bars" when I was typing the poem up and I put it in without realizing that it didn't really make sense with the lines after it.  How about changing it to: "'monkey bars' / climbing walls"?

Thanks again for your comments. This is my first time on this website, and you're all really helpful!