for Ben
Pagonia
cicadas at highest sun
two kilometers in,
crashing redbud blackjack oak
the sky a green dome
heartland of old piedmont
hardwoods
few of these forests left
felled to bunchers
planted to pine
those swift-growing
sterile rows
up ancient slopes
the continental tilts of
warps and folds
along the lime and seams
of oceans pressed to coal
long before this georgia,
this nation,
before all the previous nations
snap of branch in face
returns me to my next step
each gathering deeper folds
each a history of ancient forest
oldest mountains worn
by ceaseless cycles
we finally rest under wings
of elm, hickory, cedar,
striped maples with goosefoot leaf
sweat blurring vision
slurping the thick oxygen-rich swamp-
air here
at sea bottom
horsefly slow and heavy
in the ebb tide
the forest service botanist
pads his brow genuflects and
parts the leaves of lowest foliage
and there
like tiny green graves
seven, maybe eight
minute plants,
the entire known population
green masts with miniature sails
frozen in surf of deep hardwood duff
dried leaves potter's steaming humus
greenhouse sauna of forest floor,
only these -
known population -
"small-whorled pagonia"
utterly fragile papyrus scrolls
of some tertiary time of
cycads and tree ferns,
foot-wide dragonflies
these specks of life
utterly inconsequential
these genetic messengers
through all those millennia
one careless act seals the caves
a boot, tire, horse,
drag one log, set one fire,
an entire civilization
extinct
this land stewardship
is but to protect our home
from ourselves
keepers of life forms
entire ancient lineages
a stem, cotyledon, frail seed,
a few rootlets in loose duff
- entire plant societies
what lessons for perseverance,
survival, commission through
all the harsh centuries,
the botanist
drops to his belly,
carefully, compassionately adjusting the
small foil tags naming each stem,
not a god he
nor storekeeper
nor scientist
it strikes me in this sweltering green,
a lover jealously
tending
the sick bed
counting the wounds
or the children left
after the pogroms
foster-god demi-father
on all fours
the wolf-mother
ears perked
for ratchet of chain
and feller whine
these children
are twelve thousand years old!
their own ancestor!
cicada-whine in furnace
not a stir in the leaf-clouds
and these frail green threads
that trail into dim pasts
we can never know -
are not us
- bruce g marcot
- 9/95
Photo above ©Bruce G. Marcot. I cheated here. This isn't a photo of the forest where the small-whorled pagonia plant is found in the forests of southeast U.S. ... it's actually a tropical rainforest canopy in Monteverde, Costa Rica.