Monday, November 19, 2007

Appreciating Cedar Trees

According to my blog-hit-counter, "I" just passed the 1500-hit-mark, although when I log on to my own blog, I think I'm counted as a hit, so we must take that dizzying number with a grain of smelling salts. I realize some blogs get that many hits in less than a minute. Even so, I'm mightily impressed with my 1500. If someone had spoken the phrase "blog-hit-counter" to me in 1971, or even in 1999, I may not have guessed they were speaking English.

Today's poem concerns cedar trees, which many people appreciate. They are aromatic. They are gracefully attired. Their bark is intricate. Their wood is easy to work with and, because of the resin, stands up to rot better than pine. Then there are the famous cedar-chests and those Cedars of Lebanon.

Where I grew up in the Sierra Nevada, cedars composed a good percentage of the forest's population, but they were not in the same abundance as pine trees or fir trees. Some of the old-growth cedars were massive, their bark as thick as a fist.

Here, then, is a kind of homage to cedar trees:

Cedars in Space

If there is what
we call life
elsewhere in the All,
I hope it includes
cedar trees, which are
excellent forms of what
we call life, really aromatic,
interesting nodes of
the All. I look outward
to a time when
an intergalactic
Cedar-Appreciation Festival
is held on what we call
an annual basis.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

No comments: