Good Timber

Early in our marriage my husband faced an adversity he didn't contribute to or create.  It was the first time I saw something throw him off kilter.  The unfairness of it all made me mad, but my anger would not have helped Steve.  All I could do was quietly support him.

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I gave him a card with a poem that I hoped would give him perspective.  Recently, while cleaning out his things, I found this very poem...weathered and worn.  For him to save it all those years, meant he read it when something new shook his confidence.  It it had meant something to him then...and finding it means something to me now.

Through that tattered paper, Steve was sending me a message...begging me to keep perspective...and not to let the unfairness of life keep me from being what I was meant to be.  He was imploring me to stand tall, even though the winds blow with force against me.

I needed that message today...just like Steve needed it so long ago.

27
Cyna

Good Timber

by Douglas Malloch


The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby 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 with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees;
The further sky, the greater length;
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees 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
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.