Special Feature: "Under the 400-Year-Old Ponderosa Pine" by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Contest Judge

A 400-year-old Ponderosa Pine in Rocky Mountain National Park

Under the 400-Year-Old Ponderosa Pine

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Contest Judge

What have your roots

died toward? A desert

of branches, rock for

the resting magpie,

a bundle of white flowers

at your base from the light

broken though lost limbs,

generations of pine needles,

all of you a miracle of swirl

sideways, bark that expands

in breath, branches extended

all directions, the space

you hold composed

of the first night chill.

When it is you first knew

the changing territory of the sky,

of light itself, a gesture of time

witnessing your passage

over this mountain?

Poet's Notes: I first drafted this over ten years ago while enjoying an artist residency at Rocky Mountain National Park, where I was writing to all I saw around me. This old Ponderosa pine blew me away with its size, age, beauty and presence, and it was just a little up the mountain behind the cabin where I was staying. I would regularly sit beneath it and write, and eventually, I wrote to it. 

Editor's Note:  Learn more about old ponderosa pines here:  http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_gtr109.pdf.