<I> Lodge Pole Pine cones can only open <br />under the intense heat generated by a forest fire.</I> <br /> <br />Resting couched and cross-legged <br />by the hearth at Old Faithful Inn <br />I read of fire-scorched Montana <br />and my restive mind whirls back <br />a century and a half <br />when fire ruled at Yellowstone <br />and cracked opened Lodge Pole cones - <br />spilling seeds on the blackened soil. <br /> <br />Youthful pines soared upward: <br />tutored by a hundred years <br />of showers, frost and sun <br />fed by leaf-meal and char. <br /> <br />Then loggers came to notch their trunks <br />and send them arcing to the forest floor. <br />Carpenters fixed them to the wall <br />where the moose head stares me down. <br /> <br />Montana pine cones open as I read. <br />The fires will cease and rains will follow. <br />New pines will rise to giant towers <br />then yield to the teeth of loggers’ saws. <br /> <br />A gray haired man will enter <br />a lodge's rustic great room – <br />coffee mug in hand, <br />the morning paper <br />tucked beneath his other arm <br />and sit fire-warmed by a granite hearth <br />set in a wall of Lodge Pole Pines. <br /> <br /><I>January, 2007 </I><br /><br />Robert Charles Howard<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lodge-pole-pines/
