It’s a poem that many of us had to learn as children in school: “I think that I shall never see/A poem lovely as a tree.” Its short six rhyming couplets were easy to memorize and served as an introduction to poetry. The style has fallen out of fashion and some critics dismissed it as maudlin.
The trees of old growth forests in some of our National Forests managed by the Bureau of Land Management may not have robins in their hair, but they have dozens of other birds, such as flycatchers, nuthatches, owls and scarlet tanagers, that depend on their forest homes for survival.
Now the U.S. Forest Service has put out proposals for logging in ten magnificent old growth forests, not for conservation or thinning, but for clearcutting. Although most of us will probably never get to the forests of the Midwest or West, the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont is also on the block, but it really doesn’t matter where they are. They should be protected. As Kilmer wrote, “Poems are made by fools like me/But only God can make a tree.”
Prayer for the Day
The trees you created tower above us, O God, filtering the sunlight,
And we hear the myriad sounds of birds above us;
Soft is the ground beneath our feet as we walk on scattered leaves,
And feel the music caused by the wind blowing through the branches.
Hold us in your time primeval, O Magnificent Creator,
As we touch eternity in the trees older than our Nation.
In the name of the One who walks with us in spirit,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.