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