Hey guys, this is just a poem I wrote after seeing this amazing Douglas Fir Tree at the Botanical Gardens. It’s got more of a structure than the last one, and is very romantic in sentiment.

Your roots are the kingdom,

Out of which everything grows:

All the gnarled houses, walls, and barracks

Pushing outward like a relentless tidal wave

 

Your bark rises in river rapids,

Where ivy makes a home in the water

And covers you in a green coat

Keeping you warm, making you beautiful

 

Past the ivy, the branches take over;

Sharp needles hidden by pine

Hiding the bark beneath in mystery,

Enchanting the peasants below

 

But grow above the green, and past the bark,

Rise up, yellow summit, into the sky!

Give off the pine and the earth,

And share your story with the sun

 

You look over this strange Western Land

With one eye you gaze upon the university:

A semblance of grey buildings; moulding naturally into the green like rocks

And the other looks towards the horizon:

The ceaseless Ocean; its blue touching grey

 

And I know you’ve seen much more

Five centuries worth of growth, change, and destruction

When this land—a baby tottering on its feet—stood only in greens and blues

And only the sounds of the swaying, whispering pines, comforted you;

A grandiose lullaby for your growing bark

 

And then we came and chopped your brothers down,

Carried ourselves in monsters of wood and cloth

And your westward eye could only watch,

As their stripped carcasses were shoved seabound

 

And then we learned your way,

But not before colossal structures rose;

A blink in your life—

And chameleon-like turned to the color of the sea

They stand as new totem poles

Against the backdrop of the misty mountains

 

So we played homage to our genocide—

A holocaust of your brethren—

And made a shrine for you,

And placed you, deity, in the center

 

So here you stand now:

And so when I’m dead and gone,

You shall remain

What more lives, and strange happenings will you see?

How strange and petty our human squabbles seem to be!

Will those squabbles destroy the Earth and, ultimately, you?

Or will you still stand tall as our world births anew?