Friday, September 2, 2011

A Poem for the Park


Ode to the Doomed Trees of Kopachuck Park

O large and foredoomed Firs, whose shady depths 
retain the fleeting sun and cooling rain; 
our sighs for you are crying through the boughs.
This summer eve among the dark'ning green
where pairs of fox kits played about your roots,
I mourn your soft wood beds and long-held home. 

Salal and huckleberry will abide
and gray-blue tides flow on beyond the land
long past the killing of your time and kind.
And we'll return in passing, even stand
where now your noble crown and glory waits,
as witness to the swift and deadly cuts.

We humans hate the ill that can't be cured, 
and serve the break that takes a better death, 
nor stop to care what road your soul prefers.
But still, it seems a cruel and fatal plan 
of man to demonstrate the flawed design
that saves the woods by cutting out the trees. 

Patty Craig Kennedy, Gig Harbor, Washington

2 comments:

Chris Bronstad said...

Beautiful Patty, essence from the heart! Thanks for contributing.
chris from vaughn bay

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Chris. Recognize the view?

Thanks, Robin, for making that edit. It reminded me of an old Oscar Wilde joke...
Buttonholed by a British matron at a house party, he was asked how he'd spent his morning.
"I put a comma in a poem," he said.
Further questioned as to what he'd done that afternoon, he answered, "Why, I took it out again!"
PCK