POETRY SPOT

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Good Timber, by Douglas Malloch

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Douglas Malloch (1877 – 1938) was an American poet, short-story writer and Associate Editor of American Lumberman, a trade paper in Chicago. He was known as a "Lumberman's poet" both locally and nationally.

Born in Muskegon, Michigan which was known as a centre of the lumbering industry, he grew up amidst the forest, logging camps, sawmills and lumber yards.

In 'Good Timber' Malloch compares good men to good timber, that people, like trees, grow and reach their true potential by overcoming adversity. It is only through struggles, like a tree fighting through forest growth to reach the sun, that we grow and discover our true potential. 

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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.

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.