"How long will we live
in this leaf-strewn place,
thinking we belong
to the sky?"
— Susan Stewart; Poem from Hölderlin, (50-53)
in this leaf-strewn place,
thinking we belong
to the sky?"
— Susan Stewart; Poem from Hölderlin, (50-53)
II. A Song
When the earth was new, she was not the humble humming of interconnected souls as we know her today. The earth gnashed her jaws, badger-clawing through molten heat, defying her parents in a ballet of swirling, reckless life-making. Diving carefree into electric waters, she grew in volume, bubbling and spreading her wingspan as wide as her rubbery joints would allow. Twisting tumbling tornadoing through the ether she screamed, THIS IS REAL, THIS IS MINE, I AM ME, AND I AM MINE, voice breaking and garbling in a shakily powerful roar. Finally she slowed, heaving and huffing, sucking in air and bitterly savoring the taste of her own rusty gritty blood in her mouth. From the primeval putty she surfaced, elastic muscles cooling, metamorphosing, and rolled gently into a full-body back float. Hands spread recto-verso towards the gaseous, meandering heavens, she finally smiled, confident in her choice and new life.
As you know, that was long, long ago. Now deep riverbeds wrinkle around her eyes. You can see them beginning around mine, the slow carving of rain and tears and primeval seas into our faces. We are both so old, mothers of many, keepers of secrets. Forever weaving tales with spider silk and ocean currents into the warm dusk air.
But you asked about the woodlands.
They began as unassuming and tentatively as us all, simply stumbling and quivering reeds in the breeze. Cautiously, they were their own conductors, tiny batons appearing on the banks in little green bursts. Consequences of the earth's settling, her children and yet still strangers. They seemed to jump into being, at first, barely a whisper, and then a cacophony of tiny voices.
I remember the smell—the cautious celebration when the swampy jungles were fresh. The woodlands were a family of new parents, hardly not children themselves. A thousand million shining faces turned towards the sun, their leaves thundering in applause with the torrential wind and rain, singing a familiar song: THIS IS REAL, WE ARE WE, WE ARE OURS, AND WE CAN FEEL. Only when the softest bell-chimes of rain were left, the trees began their coda, harmonizing a cappella with the ghosts of raindrops. When their first song finished, the pastel peach sunset seeped through the solid blanket of mist, the world bathed in silence. Tears of joy rolled down velvet ferns in gracious praise and elated joy.
They were not yet battle-worn, prisoners of war in their own ancestral homes, passing down their grandmother's stories only through the faintest brushing of leaves. They stood as testaments to the triumph of serendipity. The tiniest animals and the largest insects began to skitter and flitter between their woven networks of branches and roots. A silent understanding grew to a codified agreement. Those who feast on our bark and our sap and our leaves may slowly use us to sustain your own, as long as you carry us within you and return to us to sustain our own. Uncertainty grew into alliance; alliance grew into symbiosis.
Once merely guests onto land, staccato sprouts began to harmonize with time and culture and the sheer connection of being. Feeble stems became branches, became trunks, became elders. A cross-stitched quilt of leaves—some soft, some waxy, all brilliant shades of deep verdant green—dotted the ground and the sky. The aroma of thick sap poured through the air, as if its richness became its viscosity, the wind pouring its flavor into the lungs of the land. Oh, and how they grew! They stretched up into the heavens in a beautiful, reprise of their defiant grandmother earth. Though they feasted on her, on her seemingly infinite energy, she laughed and smiled with the memory of her own wild youth. You can even see those same deep wrinkles on their skin, waves of carved bark like grooves on a tablet—carrying stories of their ancestors on their bodies.
Perhaps, if you listen closely, you can hear the humming of the earth's song.
As you know, that was long, long ago. Now deep riverbeds wrinkle around her eyes. You can see them beginning around mine, the slow carving of rain and tears and primeval seas into our faces. We are both so old, mothers of many, keepers of secrets. Forever weaving tales with spider silk and ocean currents into the warm dusk air.
But you asked about the woodlands.
They began as unassuming and tentatively as us all, simply stumbling and quivering reeds in the breeze. Cautiously, they were their own conductors, tiny batons appearing on the banks in little green bursts. Consequences of the earth's settling, her children and yet still strangers. They seemed to jump into being, at first, barely a whisper, and then a cacophony of tiny voices.
I remember the smell—the cautious celebration when the swampy jungles were fresh. The woodlands were a family of new parents, hardly not children themselves. A thousand million shining faces turned towards the sun, their leaves thundering in applause with the torrential wind and rain, singing a familiar song: THIS IS REAL, WE ARE WE, WE ARE OURS, AND WE CAN FEEL. Only when the softest bell-chimes of rain were left, the trees began their coda, harmonizing a cappella with the ghosts of raindrops. When their first song finished, the pastel peach sunset seeped through the solid blanket of mist, the world bathed in silence. Tears of joy rolled down velvet ferns in gracious praise and elated joy.
They were not yet battle-worn, prisoners of war in their own ancestral homes, passing down their grandmother's stories only through the faintest brushing of leaves. They stood as testaments to the triumph of serendipity. The tiniest animals and the largest insects began to skitter and flitter between their woven networks of branches and roots. A silent understanding grew to a codified agreement. Those who feast on our bark and our sap and our leaves may slowly use us to sustain your own, as long as you carry us within you and return to us to sustain our own. Uncertainty grew into alliance; alliance grew into symbiosis.
Once merely guests onto land, staccato sprouts began to harmonize with time and culture and the sheer connection of being. Feeble stems became branches, became trunks, became elders. A cross-stitched quilt of leaves—some soft, some waxy, all brilliant shades of deep verdant green—dotted the ground and the sky. The aroma of thick sap poured through the air, as if its richness became its viscosity, the wind pouring its flavor into the lungs of the land. Oh, and how they grew! They stretched up into the heavens in a beautiful, reprise of their defiant grandmother earth. Though they feasted on her, on her seemingly infinite energy, she laughed and smiled with the memory of her own wild youth. You can even see those same deep wrinkles on their skin, waves of carved bark like grooves on a tablet—carrying stories of their ancestors on their bodies.
Perhaps, if you listen closely, you can hear the humming of the earth's song.