An Apocalypse You Could Live With

If a sacred wood could seed itself,
Immune to any axe or saw blade,
You’d have a new kind of invasion.

And why wouldn’t angels, aliens,
More resemble plants than animals,
Were they to resemble anything?

A fine pollen could settle somewhere
Advantageous, say, Antarctica.
There’s a lot of land opening there

Soon. Bare rock would be no obstacle
For the alien forest angels.
In the long Antarctic summer day,

Someone would notice a dark green patch
Mysteriously rising from the ice.
Colonization would have begun.

You might never even realize
Extraterrestrial life at last
Had made contact. If you did, too late.

Maybe human beings would survive
As modest mammals in the shadows,
Call the woods sacred, try to be good.