Where ivy has grown and then been torn away
The marks remain from the suckers,
Paler against dark and dirty brick,
Meandering patterns of dots we cannot understand.
The world has a language all its own,
Scrawled out in places for no one to see,
And though the occasional set of eyes stumble across it,
We do not comprehend.
After a storm in the forest, where the trees
Have shaken themselves, limb slammed against limb,
Old and broken branches dot the ground,
Criss-crossing in wooden patterns not quite random,
Like Chinese ideograms woven by a deranged basket-maker.
The tracks of hermit crabs on the beach,
Dug into the soft sand above the tideline,
Where water will not wash them away,
The symbols etched into the ground, overlapping
As each creature crosses paths with another.
Frost that grows like white lace on windows in winter;
The curling new fronds of ferns, looking like green Gujarati,
The slowly undulating waves of stone sediment
Where wind and water have carved out ages:
These things speak, though we do not understand.
Here there are pleas for mercy against our unrelenting hands,
The screams of trees clear-cut for miles, of oceans
Where only gardens of beautifully-colored plastic grow,
The clouds tinged with soot and poison that weep acid.
Why do we persist in believing
this world was made only for us?
Why strive so desperately as glaciers fall,
wildfires rage, tremors rumble, tornadoes churn?
How can anyone not see these things
as the death scream of the planet,
and the inarticulate grief of the land
that has suffered for far too long?
Why do we refuse to see
that the land has a life of its own?
The world has a language all its own,
Scrawled out in places for no one to see,
And though the occasional set of eyes stumble across it,
We do not comprehend.
But perhaps we had better learn.
All Their Voices 