Only Gd can make a tree.

Wednesday, 2/8/17

In the first reading we come upon, “Out of the ground the Lord made various trees to grow.” I don’t know about you, but that line had remembering that line from an old poem. “Only God can make a tree.”

To see if I had it right, I googled it.

“I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.

  I tree that looks at God all day. And its leafy arms to pray  

 Poems are made by fools like me,

 But only God can make a tree.”

Reading on about the poetry of Joyce Kilmer, I see where the experts don’t see it as good poetry. They say his wife was a better poet.

As an Episcopalian, Kilmer wrote religious poems that didn’t succeed. In 1914 e converted to Catholicism, and he joined the famous “Fighting Forty-Ninth.” A German bullet took him In the third year of that war.    

Changing the subject, Kilmer’s sacrificing of  his young life and bride, brings up the matter of the 25, 000 young Americans who gave their lives capturing Okinawa. They saw their country as a beautiful idea worth giving their lives for.