Terra Nullias - Oct 24 2023

 

Terra Nullias

Oct 24 2023

I was surprised to learn

that dandelions and earthworms

are not native here.

That for millennia

this unknown continent

beyond the edge of the earth

got along perfectly well

without them.

Our sort

left Africa

and occupied the world,

inexorably pushing outward

until there was nowhere left to go;

opportunists,

thriving, like all invasive species

with no natural predators.

And in the vast borderless land

that was America

greedy for more.

So how long

until we belong,

entitled to be here?

As natural

as the Noah's Ark of animals

that so delighted and amazed

the first Europeans

to scramble up its shores?

Which, having been born and raised here

is hardly how I see myself.

And gazing out

at what we've made of it  —

the wild rivers

diked and damned;

the patchwork

of plowed and fenced fields;

the great cities

with their glass-walled towers

sparkling like confections of light,

as if to say

night or day

doesn’t matter to us  —

the question seems absurd;

hard to imagine

it wasn't always like this

and we weren't always here.

So how long

until we truly fit?

Until this continent

is our rightful home,

and its altered ecology

the new normal?

Or have we so remade it in our image

there's no way to tell

who was here first

and who invaded?

The terra nullias

that never wanted us

and we never thought to ask.

The term terra nullius is conventionally used in a political sense: the presumed right of more powerful newcomers to claim the New World for themselves, not only because no other monarch had as yet planted his flag, but also because its existing inhabitants were either subhuman, unworthy savages, or simply didn't count.

I'm using it in a different sense: our ancestors planting themselves here — along with their farm animals, beasts of burden, and pets; their seeds, bugs, diseases, and vermin — as if its untouched flora and fauna didn't matter.

There are larger biological questions, as well: how long until we stop calling something invasive instead of native? And isn't everything essentially invasive, considering that nothing in nature ever stays still: every organism is on the move, every one is an opportunist.