How Ohio Came to Fame

A fragment of matted stone breaks surface, it is already colonized by moss and fungi factories. Eventually all will churn green spawns to green lawns, not yet of course, ‘yet’ has to wait for the rain and the blood to settle. Stone must be crushed by the weight of circumstance, a microscopic slime pushed up above a miasmic mud to become our living graveyards. The Shawnee come and go their last battles a war dance passing like fireflies on a summers night. Layers of settlers add calcium to forest roots. Time seeds towns, industry turns rough hands over mind-made wheels. Worms grow fat. Tornadoes of antique shops emerge out of a storied history. Abandoned Mills evolve into art galleries. Old railway lines end where they began. The moss returns, blight creeps as it levels. The larger the urban sprouting, the more the moss and lichen flourish. 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 veined blueprints. of a future expansion.