A found poem written by A.
All words borrowed from John Muir’s essay titled
“The American Forests”
Five hundred species of trees,
shoulder to shoulder.
Five hundred shoulder to shoulder.
A green, billowy sea in summer
golden and purple in autumn,
pearly gray,
like a steadfast frozen mist of
interlacing branches and sprays
in leafless, restful winter.
Five hundred species of trees.
oak and elm,
hickory and tupelo,
gum and liriodendron,
sassafras and ash,
linden and laurel,
irrepressible hosts of spruce and pine,
aspen and willow,
nut-pine and juniper.
Wide-branching, endless variety;
walnut and maple,
chestnut and beech,
touching limb to limb,
shoulder to shoulder,
spreading a leafy translucent canopy
extending undaunted
from mountain to mountain,
coast to coast.
Poised bravely, their domes and spires
ever aspiring and seeking the sky
three hundred feet above a silvery embroidery of rivers and creeks
watering and brightening all the vast glad wilderness
the ferns and the lilies enamel the ground;
they are shoulder to shoulder on the ground
to join the darkening multitude of pine,
giant cedars and spruces,
silver firs and sequoias,
kings of their race
the glory of the world!
They are rich beyond thought, immortal,
immeasurable, lordly monarchs.
Five hundred species of trees.
Lifted into the light, submerged,
rolled and sifted in seas with wave embroidery
there is beauty, and melody,
and kindly, wholesome abundance.
And in the fullness of time,
growing and changing
from beauty to beauty.
For every day, nature
paints them with flowers and fruit;
the loveliest colors.
Everywhere
gay sparkling spice-trees
hosts of spiry, rosiny evergreens with
dark, level-topped cypresses
shoulder to shoulder
ranging in size.
They rise!
The forests, however slighted by man
must be a great delight to God,
for they are
the best gardens
He has ever planted;
He is ever making them
more beautiful
as the years
roll by.
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