The newspaper is full of stories of wild fires on hillsides in California.  I came across a two-stanza verse I wrote in Malaysia in 1990.  It seems appropriate.

GRASS AND PEOPLE ARE MUCH ALIKE

Grass and people are much alike.

There is a great variety of both found everywhere upon the earth and in it, too,

if fossil records are to be believed.

Both survive in outrageous circumstances.

With perverse tenacity they cling against all odds.

And trees, too, are so like people.

These great trees rising above the jungle canopy,

proud, impervious they seem

as one would think they’d grow in Connecticut,

but one early frost in September would humble them

and anyone, however full of faith, who plants them there,

Wednesday, July 18, 1990