Lodge Pole Pine cones can only open
under the intense heat generated by a forest fire.

Resting couched and cross-legged
by the hearth at Old Faithful Inn
I read of fire-scorched Montana
and my restive mind whirls back
a century and a half
when fire ruled at Yellowstone
and cracked opened Lodge Pole cones -
spilling seeds on the blackened soil.

Youthful pines soared upward:
tutored by a hundred years
of showers, frost and sun
fed by leaf-meal and char.

Then loggers came to notch their trunks
and send them arcing to the forest floor.
Carpenters fixed them to the wall
where the moose head stares me down.

Montana pine cones open as I read.
The fires will cease and rains will follow.
New pines will rise to giant towers
then yield to the teeth of loggers’ saws.

A gray haired man will enter
a lodge's rustic great room –
coffee mug in hand,
the morning paper
tucked beneath his other arm
and sit fire-warmed by a granite hearth
set in a wall of Lodge Pole Pines.

January, 2007

Robert Charles Howard

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lodge-pole-pines/