That poet born of heaven came to be in residence, and plucking his resounding lyre strings, he summoned many shade trees to his presence.
– Ovid, X. 127-130
Mightier than the Mississippi,
Forming valleys,
Leaving here and there the body,
Sinewy and long, of some water beast
Long dead, its form found years later,
Entombed in stone.And when the river receded,
Leaving the land prone, naked,
The Poet came and called them into being:
The hickory, and ash – the cedar,
Where the birds would rest when the snows came.
The sycamores, to line the winding streams,
Frail daughters of that river long departed,
Their bodies like ghosts along the water.
Poplars grew, with blossoms like teacups,
And the oak tree, as fine and full as a lung.
All these burst up from the mire of the fled river.
And beneath their canopy others grew:
Rhododendron, bloodroot, columbine,
Hepatica, trillium, phlox.
Their names like songs,
Faint music rising from their quivering bodies
With each rainfall.
New beasts came to the mountains,
Ones so wild and free it seemed a sin almost to name them.
Myths, and legends, whole religions sprang from the woods,
From the Earth the river left.
Now, there is a dissembling on the mountains.
Land centuries in the making
Reduces to dust, vacant as a barren planet,
Caustic as a star.
Without roots,
Each rain comes like death to the land,
And the soil that took lifetimes to build is
Expulsed, lodges itself down hill, down stream.
So how will I plant you now?
There is no creeper, no ivy strong enough to halt
Such decay.
And so this Genesis elapses into chaos,
Turning, lastly, to elegy, to mourn.
