My name is Joseph Bruchac, and I’m going to read my poem, “Windfall in the Andrews Forest” from this beautiful book, The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science.
The way the giant Douglas fir leaned after five centuries showed the way wind wanted it to go. Wide roots spread into the soil like hands were not enough to hold. It crashed down through the canopy, scattered branches over the stream. Needles and old man’s beard lichen fluttering down like green rain.
The small trees below, yews, hemlocks, and alders, were not net enough to slow it. But the earth and its stones were stronger. For when the tree struck, its great trunk broke. Its bark was shed like an overcoat. And its layers of growth split to splinters.
