Ohioan Time-Scapes

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.