O MIGHTY OAK

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O MIRACLE FROM THE MIND OF GOD...
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O mighty oak
  You Majestic One!
One out of
  Maybe ten thousand...

Did you grow
  From a little acorn
For a hundred years
  To outlive most
Of your kind?

(You know, don't you...
  That you can claim
The most-famous metaphor
  In writing:
"Great Oaks from
  Little acorns grow!")

Were you a tiny sapling
  When the peaceful, innocent
World changed forever
  In August, 1914,
And WWI started?

Were you a skinny
  Young tree
When the Great Depression
  Came?

Were you whipped around
  And around and nearly
Smothered, "something awful,"
  During Dust Bowl times?

Were you a "teen-ager"
  When I came along
In the thirties?

Do you remember
  The terrible conflict---
WWII...that took seventy million
  People out of the world...
Disrupted and ruined
  Millions of other lives...
Destroyed countless cities---
  And all for nothing
At the whim
  Of that dictator,
The Evil One.

Are you...somehow able
  To feel the pain
People feel, and felt then?
  I've heard: "Plants can."
Tests have shown so...
  And you look like
You have the heart
  Of an oak!

You have lived
  Thru' JFK's loss...
Vietnam, Watergate,
  Desert Storms One
And Two---
  Thru' Monica
And September 11...

How did you do it?
  That seems like too much
For any living thing, and
  There are no tree "Shrinks,"
Are there?

I must warn you---
  You can live thru' all this
And still be felled...
  For there are people
Out there...I know some;
  There is nothing,
They love more...
  Than cutting down a tree.
Sadly... it's true.

You have noticed, by now
  That every neat thing
In this World
  Has its Nemesis.

Oh Mighty Oak
  I admire you!
May you live
  A hundred years more...

Tho' I'll be gone..
  And maybe living
In a land
  Where there are
Oaks bigger than you...
  Beside clear mountain
Streams, flowing from
  The throne of God...

With beauties and things
  Not ever even imagined
Or conceived
  By the mind of man.

There ought to be
  A tree heaven
For you.

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BY MIL
10/13/13