Good Timber

Intracoastal Waterway

A Poem Found, "Good Timber":  The photo is down at the shore on the Intracoastal Waterway, not far from the Mary Esther/Hwy. 98 location which used to be the home of some of my grandkids.  

I think this photo is Torin, my grandson.  Notice the "fence"?  Or maybe you would call it a guard rail?  It reminds me that fences can be made of wood, created to be a guide and a protection, as well as for keeping someone or an animal corraled.  

Torin is a young man, now, holding down a job in Orlando, and still great fun to be around!  Around Fort Walton Beach, this waterway is called "The Sound".  Torin is good timber.  The Sound represents to me all of the events that follow our life-lines.  Good, bad, and indifferent.  This is the test of good timber, the challenges, perhaps.

The Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) is a 3,000-mile (4,800 km) inland waterway along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts of the United States, running from Boston, Massachusetts, southward along the Atlantic Seaboard and around the southern tip of Florida, then following the Gulf Coast to Brownsville, Texas.

Location: Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts of ...

Length: 3,000-mile (4,800 km)

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

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.

This poem was printed in a church magazine many years ago; I had cut it out to save and re-discover.  If you want to see it on the Internet, put the title into Google.  Here is one such "hit".