This week I attended training in arts integration.  We studied Aboriginal culture and art, and created our own "Aboriginal" paintings.  With that we integrated poetry.  I started out wanting to paint and write about the effect of the spotted owl on the lumber industry in Oregon, but it soon turned to one of the most important people in my life instead.  

Aboriginal art uses symbols and dots to tell a story.   The symbol in my painting is a commonly used Aboriginal symbol.  You should be able to interpret it by reading my poem.

Tree Farmer

1

Dry, clean, and clear,                                                                 

The air wisps and waves over rolling hills and jagged peaks.

It dives and dozes in the summer morning coolness,

And traces the lines

Separating the earthy shapes below.

Soft as the whisper of a dragonfly’s wings,

It touches the tops of the grand Douglas firs

Drinking in the deep green,

And twisting down and round the scratchy trunks.

Until it breaks through the evergreen wall,

To the clear cut canyon.

The air weaves through drying brush piles,

But stops short, seeing

A sapling, peeking

From the sea of brown.

And then another.

And another,

The beginning of a new forest.

2

The man grows trees.

He grows children too.

The air gathers round the father and his children,

Who once carried dusty shovels

And burlap bags of saplings.

Later, staplers and papers to foil the deer,

Tin foil to protect from mice.

The air races round the children, their mother and father,

Faces lit by campfire,

Singing with an accordion,

Roasting marshmallows in the glowing coals,

Slumbering.

The air cools to older youth.

With their father,

They wield long pole saws in the drizzling rain,

And then chainsaws,

Pruning and training to grow

Straight and tall, lumber.

It is his farm.

It is their farm.

3

But really it is his farm.

And now the air dips down,

Ruffles gray hair,

And traces wrinkles,

Lines of satisfaction.

Seventy, bent, but sinewy,

The aging man climbs through a stand of trees,

Rows standing at attention

Showing respect.

I will not spend my final years

In a rocking chair,

The thought flows,

And the air embraces

His trees,

His children,

And his memories,

And whispers strength into his ears.