State of Nature
June 15 2008


It’s June that brings me closest to my mortality.
Not September
with its skeleton trees,
and dead leaves, swirling in the lee of the shed.
Nor January
when winter locks-in,
the month of night.

Because in June, nature presses-in
relentlessly.
Raspberries, with their subterranean tentacles
sending new shoots poking-up through the grass.
And trees, strangling the stairway
that make me duck, brushing past.
And picking weeds from the cracks in the patio
by force of habit,
bending each time I pass.
Yet tomorrow, even more come back.

In June, I am pre-occupied by order,
when nature seems out of control
in this ferocious window of growth.
So if I should miss a single season, or even a week
the place would go wild,
as invisible as lost Mayan cities
swallowed-up by the tropics.
And I realize that what I have built will hardly last,
my illusion of permanence a constant battle
against disorder,
the natural state of things.
Like me, it will disappear without a trace,
consumed by forest.

Perhaps, in some unimagined future
they will excavate this place,
re-construct my ancient way of life
from scraps of paper
faded photos.
Or, more likely, all that remains will be a cracked foundation,
overflowing with ripe red raspberries
and songbirds, gorging.