Photograph by Oregon Curly
The Tillamook Burn
These mountains have heard God;
they burned for weeks. He spoke
in a tongue of flame from sawmill trash
and you can read His word
down to the rock.
In milky rivers the steelhead
butt upstream to spawn
and find a world with depth again,
starting from stillness and water
across gray stone.
Inland along the canyons
all night weather smokes
past the deep and the widow-makers--
trees too dead to fall
till again He speaks.
Mowing the criss-cross trees
and the listening peaks.
William Stafford
Posted over on Friends of William Stafford
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