When the poet likens growth and development to a fierce battle against nature, he suggests an army far larger than those merely operating the bulldozers. One contingent collaborates with the oil industry, another navigates the bustling roads in cars; intriguingly, road and store builders seem to be conspicuously absent from his list. Typically, society views growth and development as hallmarks of peace, yet Kunitz portrays them as acts of aggression. Human endeavors can largely be categorized into times of war and peace.

War is universally acknowledged as a destroyer—not only of human life but of flora and fauna as well. However, in "The War Against the Trees," Kunitz challenges readers to ponder the notion that peace itself harbors destructive forces. It wages a less visible war, not upon masses of people, but upon the vast realms of plant and animal life. The aftermath, through Kunitz's lens, resembles a ravaged battlefield: barren craters and a desolate moonscape stripped of all signs of life—human, animal, and botanical alike.

As the poem’s "corner lot" succumbs to the relentless advance of bulldozers, it's not just the vibrant flora that perishes, nor merely the wildlife that is uprooted and scattered. A deeper casualty emerges: the past itself. In the poem's third stanza, Kunitz seems to reminisce about a childhood under the embrace of towering trees, where laughter and life thrived in their cool shadows. Now, he perceives a distressing transformation he labels as "grievous," unfolding within a suburban sprawl stripped of lush greenery and the wild. This barren landscape also serves as a metaphorical canvas, once rich with memories, now washed clean of cherished recollections and nostalgia that accompany the inevitable journey into old age, an experience often described as "being replaced."

With the disappearance of verdant giants, the possibility of revisiting the past diminishes, Kunitz muses. What remains is a future barren of nature, replenished instead with a distinctly human pursuit of growth and development, yet devoid of true essence. In the poem's perspective, these terms should not be mistaken for genuine progress.

Growth and Development

In the evocative narrative of “The War Against the Trees,” the relentless march of bulldozers invades a once serene woodland, now claimed by an oil company. This upheaval ripples through the town and deeply impacts the speaker, painting a vivid tableau of transformation. During the 1950s, this scene was commonplace, as an astonishing three thousand acres of farmland were razed each day to make way for sprawling tract housing. Facilitated by existing roads, this suburban sprawl allowed for the daily migrations between burgeoning outlying districts and city centers.

The post-war era saw an explosion in suburban growth, with homes and shopping centers mushrooming across the landscape. This surge sparked the construction of expansive new highways, designed to accommodate the burgeoning fleet of automobiles that reshaped America into a nation tethered to oil. In this cascading chain of events, oil consumption soared, prompting further land clearances, as depicted in “The War Against the Trees,” in the endless quest for oil to satisfy consumer demand.

Kunitz does not delineate the ultimate fate of the ravaged land within his poem; however, he does emphasize that the machinery of destruction operates under the banner of Standard Oil, a global titan of the industry. Against this backdrop of industrial expansion, the poem unfurls a poignant scene. Whether earmarked for corporate offices or extraction sites, the land is stripped bare of its lush greenery and teeming wildlife, all in the name of what society dubs growth and development. Though these terms typically carry positive connotations, Kunitz wields them with a critical lens, illustrating a darker narrative.

The bulldozers, he describes, are "drunk with gasoline," ripping through the earth to prepare it for further oil production, whether through the installation of drilling rigs or the expansion of distribution networks. This voracious appetite for movement and mobility propels a relentless cycle of land clearing for roads, urban development, and oil extraction. This cycle, commonly heralded as “growth and development,” is aptly characterized by Kunitz as a form of "war."