All them foreigners that move here
they always tell me that they've come
To search for open spaces
‘cause cities made ‘em feel so numb
They came out here to Montana
to a place where they could feel free
To bulldoze out the pristine streams
and chop down the Aspen trees
To tear away the lodge pole pine
ponderosas and tamarack
Dig away the mountain side
and cram their houses back to back
They flatten out the rolling hills
to build a shopping mall or two
Built all them buildings so damn tall
their blocking out the mountain view
They've taken all the wildflowers
and laid down asphalt and cement
Put solar panels on their roofs
'cause that’ll save the environment
Should a deer wander into town
they want the law to do the deed
Because having wild critters around
is something that they just don't need
They say that they feel better now
with all the beauty they can see
Just sitting in their sealed off rooms
watchin' nature shows on TV
Categories:
tamarack, poems, poetry,
Form: Rhyme
It's a glorious, beautiful noon
I wish were dressed in green;
spring is around the corner.
Hosanna! Lavenders will soon be
in bloom and smell so sweet!
I'm sitting here
on a weather-beaten bench
watching birds hopping about,
tap dancing with their beaks.
Strangers walk past me, left and right
Yonder, the afternoon sun
hovers above a tamarack tree
being gently stirred by the zephyr.
I just spotted an eagle
commanding the sky solo
Hope floats happily
in clusters of alabaster clouds
It's powdered in faces, too
It makes my soul sing a song
with the cheerful birds
How beautiful is today?
*written outdoors in real time*
03/07/2021
Categories:
tamarack, appreciation, beauty, day, imagery,
Form: Free verse
A forest soldier still armored in golden chain
guards the Canadian Shield from brooding vines and
horizons gray
In November's wind, it holds its yellow needles
like comrades clasped in feeble arms of wood
This tree, an x-ray of late autumn's soul, glows
with its ocher pins,
deaf to bids of meddling snow.
Soft sounds, these falling fibres
beating war drums
'gainst an early winter foe
Protester at the gate of cold
tamarack's ramshackle yellow
As shouts of autumn's glory
still
Poem composed 2020
Revised: February 1/2022
Categories:
tamarack, allusion, autumn, devotion, extended
Form: Free verse
As we fall back to standard
and no longer save daylight,
the mornings are brighter but
dark comes so much sooner.
Stark maples bare against red carpet
leaving only golden oaks and tamarack
to stand against the evergreens.
Let us seize this stolen hour
and together go undercover
to make a time to remember.
Categories:
tamarack, time,
Form: Free verse
Cause of my smile
I stand here for many days alone
And enjoy the rays and the cool breeze that falls upon
But I become very sad seeing on
My brothers and sisters are being cut down around
By bombs and missiles by some odd and cruel men;
Just the day before a sister of mine
Was shot down by a monster Zion
He was scolded and his action was condemned
By a man of humanity whose good name is John
But for the other cases of rape and murder around the world
Humanity gone into bins
And to prevent the heinous crimes there is none;
In the wee hours Today came a smart girl
A young lady may be she is about twenty two or twenty three
Before I know anything she took nine pictures
By her Nippon camera with a smile and that too is for free;
Perhaps one day like my brothers and sisters, I will die
With smart bombs and tamarack missiles
But today I have enough reasons to be happy
And on my round face to have a big smile
As someone inside me has seen a tinge of my folded beauty.
Categories:
tamarack, smile,
Form: Free verse