"White Fir" -- a Poem by Poet Sam Green

For Donald Hall

Near the woodshed a white fir,
bent under snow
nearly to the ground
stays bowed,
even after the thaw.
The woods are full
of trees like this--cedar, hemlock, yew.

Year after year it happens,
the awful
weight, more, almost
than can be borne,
& then a lifetime struggling
upright again, drawn
by whatever light still filters
through the heavy canopy
of all those gone before.

"White Fir in Snow" ©2008 by Washington Poet Laureate Sam Green; from his book, The Grace of Necessity, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2008.