The Trees

A sketch poem of the trees in my view this morning looking due East.

Center stage is my beloved Ponderosa, aka, “Pondo”. Between the two trees in front my son and I pitched a tent and slept for a month while we framed up the cabin. You can see the plains stretching out 40 miles beyond. Just 30 feet beyond them you can see the blue green of the Juniper and the more yellow green of the Doug Fir on the left. Somewhere back in there are the Aspen and they’ve got their own green, plus they dance.

                        The Trees

         Mostimes no poems come,
          having better things to do.
               Trees must be tinted
      one hundred shades of green
              and a tiny bit of blue.
        One thousand pine needles
              shout for the spotlight
              on every branch I see.
            We must thank sunlight,
              so brilliantly bright he.

         This is a competitive world
         with vanity stretching wide,
               down the valley and
               up the mountainside.
                 Every day I pause
         and stroke a Pondo’s beard.
           I weed the brown bristles
        leaving the remaining thatch
       a slightly deeper hue of green,
        I thought impossible to match.

              What is more perfect
                       than a tree?
              Can it be called vanity
               when you are indeed 
              a thing of utter beauty?
               They are all a still life
      waiting impatiently for the artist
              with enough patience
       to capture their timelessness.

                When a wind blows,
                    there it is at last,
                   poetry in motion.