Trying to Survive

Humans have a long history of venerating elderflora and megaflora. They have an equally long history of burning and felling them.

Even bristlecone pines give up

The ghost, eventually, don’t they?

Ah, there’s an adverb that deserves

Its own initial capital—

Eventually. Name of a ghost,

Maybe the name of every ghost,

Eventually. Can you name lives

Not haunted by it, long or short?

Eventually, you’ll change enough,

In an instant, in a decade,

You’ll no longer count as a life,

Although your remains may vanish

Into the guts of the living

And, as part of them, keep living.

Or twirl as smoke. Or fossilize.

The Tasmanian huon pine

Is so resistant to rotting,

Trunks can lie in the ground intact

For thousands of years, refusing

To get back into life again.

Bravo to them. Eventually,

However, even their remnants,

Even petrified wood, returns,

Thanks to that ghost, to cycling

As some other distribution

Of scattered molecules, haunted,

Pulsing, some of them, surviving.