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National Arbor Day is the final Friday.
The cottonwood is the state tree of Colorado's neighbors Nebraska, Kansas, and Wyoming.
Colorado's state tree is the blue spruce.
What's that you say?
Is this the way to Number Forty?
Lost your way?
Go straight ahead . . .
Yes, the highway is nice for tourists;
we help to pay, in taxes;
but down this way folks don't drive autos very much.
Looks sort of bare to me without the trees---
Concrete is great for cars,
and the cottonwoods break it sometimes
when the frost goes out and they heave in the ground;
so they grubbed them out . . .
My father planted cottonwoods both sides the road
as far as his land went;
he carried water from the well to help them out
till the roots struck deep . . .
I mind how travellers, going through to Denver or Cheyenne,
would stop to rest their teams and eat in the shade:
He died last year . . .
This country surely has built up---today
they're burning stumps . . .
It's finished, so they say,
Clear through to Kansas---I don't know.
I've never been---we helped to pay.
Reprinted from Pictures from the Plains and Other Poems: Collected Verse by Nellie Burget Miller, Poet Laureate of Colorado.The Poets Press, National Poetry Center - "Radio City" - Rockefeller Center, New York. Copyright 1936 by Nellie Burget Miller. Fair Use. Vintage Colorado Poetry would welcome hearing from the poet's family.
