Odd Weeds

Aug 3 2016

Odd weeds 

keep poking through the deck,

squeezing in-between the planks

and opening their leaves

to drink in the sun.

It sits 6 feet high

above a dark enclosed space

containing who-knows-what.

I imagine spiders and snakes

and something that recently died,

slowly decomposing 

in the cool dank.

Determined plants, eking out the meagre light

that sifts through the slats

and lattice-work walls.

So they must subsist on water and air

long enough to reach the sun;

as if we could survive

deprived of oxygen.

Some innate sense

tugging them upward,

then bursting out

in the glory of light. 

Such is the life force;

plants that keep appearing

where I thought nothing could grow, 

thin stems and pale leaves

greedy for light.

Like weeds, cracking concrete.

Like the city, after we’re gone.

How long, I wonder

until I am that ancient Mayan ruin;

crumbling stone, over-run by impassable jungle,

my clearing in the woods

reclaimed by the kingdom of plants?

Another man vs. nature poem. Which is, I admit, getting to be a rather tired trope. But I had no intention of pushing the same earnest environmental polemic. Rather, this poem arose from a simple observation, and all I could do was follow it where it took me. 

Archaeologists have  recently discovered these lost Mayan cities by flying over the jungle and imaging them with a shallow ground-penetrating version of radar called LiDAR :  it uses light instead of sound, and allows them to see patterns of vegetation and soil hidden by the dense jungle canopy. When these cities flourished, they may very well have been the high point of human civilization. And although we know these did not, other ancient civilizations that are barely remembered lasted so much longer than ours has yet existed.  So whenever I see a modern skyline, with its gleaming high-rises and soaring towers, I think of obsolescence and pride:  the fullness of time;  how we privilege the now; the conceit of modernity.