Thank you Derek for this poem by your great grandfather. This is so rich and stirring:
.
The Trees (circa 1919, Olympia)
I live in a land of trees,
And it is as much agony
As joy
To live there.
For though the trees are mighty,
Crowned with their evergreen chaplets of the centuries,
Yet they are helpless
Against indifference and carelessness.
For men with rat-like natures
Gnaw constantly at their strongholds,
The forests;
Those forests,
That should be flourishing
For our children’s children
Now lie prostrate
Gnawed by the rat-teeth of saw and axe—
Eaten alive
By the insidiously creeping red rats of fire—
A horde let loose
By our generation’s carelessness and indifference.
O trees—
My soul shrinks back in agony and remorse
Into your dim, pleading shadows.