Tuesday, 18 of June of 2013
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books.
Already the first branch-tips brush
at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at
your life.
Jane Hirshfield
Dec.-Jan. 2001 Earth First!
Date: July 18, 2012
Categories: Jane Hirshfield
Tags: branch-tips, Clutter, eternity, houses, immensity, lifetime, long-lived, short-lived, trees, VibeTribe Healing
Dedicated to: Lobaria, Usnea, Witches Hair, Map Lichen, Beard Lichen, Ground Lichen, Shield Lichen
Back then, what did I know?
The names of subway lines, busses,
How long it took to walk twenty blocks.
Uptown and downtown.
Not north, not south, not you.
When I saw you, later, seaweed reefed in the air,
you were gray-green, incomprehensible, old.
What you clung to, hung from: old.
Trees looking half-dead, stones.
Marriage of fungi and algae,
chemists of air,
changers of nitrogen-unusable into nitrogen-usable.
Like those nameless ones
who kept painting, shaping, engraving
unseen, unread, unremembered.
Not caring if they were no good, if they were past it.
Rock wools, water fans, earth scale, mouse ears, dust,
ash-of-the-woods.
Transformers unvalued, uncounted.
Cell by cell, word by word, making a world they could live in.
Date: April 3, 2012
Categories: Jane Hirshfield
Tags: Algae, Chemical elements, Dielectrics, epiphytes, lichen, Mike Mercker, moss, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Seaweed, Seaweeds
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