Poetry

I'm afraid to go to bed. I'm afraid of the demons that haunt me there. I've been thinking a lot about the kind of person I want to be, and what I think happiness is. The happy man I see in the mirror and around the corner is such a better person than this feeble body allows it to be.

Good Timber

The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
That 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 sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man,
But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow in ease.
The stronger wind, the stronger trees,
The farther sky, the greater length,
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In tree or man, 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.
~ Douglas Malloch