Get Tough Like the Trees

Get tough!
Get tough like the trees!
Fibrous, thick, barked, and covered!
Get tough like the trees!
Full of thick sinews and veins of sap!
Get tough like the trees!
Firm roots holding fast the deep soil!
Get tough like the trees!
Blow in the wind and hold your ground!
Get tough like the trees!
Let go when the cold comes ; grow back when the Spring arrives!
Get tough like the trees!
Green boughs strong that weather the shifting climes and circumstance.
Get tough like the trees!
Proud and tall, monument to hard ages endured, and still growing strong!
Get tough like the trees!
Come into your fullness, acorn!
Grow barrel-bellied, shoot and sprout!
Be venerable, hoary-dandered elders!
The Earth will ask much of you ; the weather asks, too.
Times will be tough and yet still you must find your green,
and reach up towards the sun, or stretch down,
and feel the sugars locked in your ground-sieving roots.
It would be bad if you withered,
It would be bad if you lost your sap,
It would be bad if green leaves no longer grew.
Get tough like the trees!
There's fruits you're here to grow, to give.
You'll want to know the joy of sharing
with those who gather beneath your boughs.
You'll want to know the pride of giving
by having come into your own
through thick and thin, and still having rendered something juicy.
Get tough like the trees!
Yield not to axe nor fire,
and do your part to regrow the Old Growth woods of old.
Get tough like the trees!
Your fruit is needed,
Your shelter is needed,
Your proud example for the shoots is needed.