Resting couched and cross-legged
by the hearth at Old Faithful Inn
I read of fire-seared Montana.
My restive mind roams back
a century and a half
to when flames ruled Yellowstone -
cracking open Lodgepole cones -
spending seeds on blackened soil.

Youthful pines soared skyward:
tutored by seven score seasons
of showers, frost and sun
nourished by leaf-meal and char.

Then loggers came to notch their trunks
and sent them arcing to the forest floor.
Carpenters fixed them to the wall
where the moose head stares me down.

Montana pine cones crackle as I read.
After soaking rains have quenched the flames,
those seeds will rise to giant towers
before yielding to the whine of chainsaw teeth.

A gray haired man will enter
a rustic Montana lodge,
a coffee mug clutched in one hand,
the morning paper in the other
and sit fire-warmed by a granite hearth
set in a wall of Lodgepole Pines.

*January, 2007