Cool poem. Would be cooler if it were true. Try thinking about this next time you compare your friendly neighborhood oak tree in a wide open field with a scrubby alpine bush, barely scraping by with its soft, knotted, damaged wood.
Haha. Great poem regardless, I actually liked it in its entirety better:
The tree that never had to fight,
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out on the open plain,
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king,
But lives and dies a scrawny thing.
The man who never had to toil,
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share,
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man,
But lived and died as he began.
Good timber does not grow in ease,
The stronger the wind, the stronger trees
The farther sky, the greater the length
The more the storm, the more the strength,
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In tree and men good timbers grow.
Where thickest lies the forest growth
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
This is the common law of life.
Douglas Mallock
