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Poem

A fragment of matted stone breaks surface.
It is already colonized
by moss and fungi factories;
eventually they will churn 
green spawn into rural Ohio towns;
not yet of course, ‘yet’ has to wait
for the rain and the blood to settle.

The stone must be crushed
by the weight of circumstance,
fields of new growth 
must be planted in microscopic slime.

If you follow the centuries, then time takes time,
but if you stay put,
and branch out like a graveyard Maple
you will see, all at once,
the Shawnee coming and going -
passing as fireflies on a summer night.
You will see families of settlers,
adding their calcium to the earth.

Maple leaves and bone litter and layer,
until even that residue begins to construct,
a filigree scaffolding
the weave of industrious minds. 

All those small, time-seeded towns
come sprouting. Hands work wood,
and stone then brick. Hands lay down
in the soil, to feed a worm-tilling earth. 

Pebbles unearthed 
by gentle raindrops and tornadoes
become antique stores.
Abandoned mills empty out
into art galleries and cake shops.
Arts and crafts stores signal the end
of old railway lines.

Cities of iron and coal bud and blight.
The moss returns.
The larger the urban sprouting,
the more the moss and lichen flourish;
but this is all in the unseen,
unless your spread yourself
through time like a branching tree.

Eventually though, Ohio
will leave its foliate forest temples
to be discovered
by incipient microbes that even now
live on the underside of rocks,
as codified plans and veiny blueprints.

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