The Summit Redwood

Only stand high a long enough time your lightning

    will come; that is what blunts the peaks of

    redwoods;

But this old tower of life on the hilltop has taken

    it more than twice a century, this knows in

    every

Cell the salty and the burning taste, the shudder

    and the voice.

                     The fire from heaven; it has

    felt the earth's too

Roaring up hill in autumn, thorned oak-leaves tossing

    their bright ruin to the bitter laurel-leaves,

    and all

Its under-forest has died and died, and lives to be

    burnt; the redwood has lived. Though the fire

    entered,

It cored the trunk while the sapwood increased. The

    trunk is a tower, the bole of the trunk is a

    black cavern,

The mast of the trunk with its green boughs the

    mountain stars are strained through

Is like the helmet-spike on the highest head of an

    army; black on lit blue or hidden in cloud

It is like the hill's finger in heaven. And when the

    cloud hides it, though in barren summer, the

    boughs

Make their own rain.

                    Old Escobar had a cunning trick

    when he stole beef. He and his grandsons

Would drive the cow up here to a starlight death and

    hoist the carcass into the tree's hollow,

Then let them search his cabin he could smile for

    pleasure, to think of his meat hanging secure

Exalted over the earth and the ocean, a theft like a

    star, secret against the supreme sky.