How Long the Drought?
Harvested trees tell
their own story
Rings inside rings
circles
of life are repeated each season
Growth years
are swollen with water
slender shows drought
The logic of rain is not of man's reason.
Counting back
rings a strong pattern emerges
Lasting man's lifetimes
Marking lifes passage in decades not days.
Centuries of
life are recorded in growth rings
they reflect
all the time
huge trees stood still collecting
sun's rays
Recently though
they tell a new story
rings inside rings show
a century of drought the land has been cursed
Water's been
scarce for many a decade
The trees tell the truth
man's memory is short as the slake of his thirst
This poem reflects my own experiences
on timber crews in the Sierra Nevada. When looking at growth rings,
I saw that the drought had not been an immediate problem but one
that went back to the second decade of the twentieth century.
The realization that just one year of good rain would not make
up for the long term drought struck me deeply. I wondered what
had triggered the difference in the water cycle. Was it just part
of a bigger cycle that could be refelected in older trees? I never
counted rings back farther than 250 years, but just those rings
placed my lifetime in a different perspective.
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Last updated May 15, 2000