He said the algae grew by themselves, but the fungus would not. I should have liked to have heard more but he fled, so did Miss Smith the Librarian.
—Beatrix Potter
Some nights listening closely to rain on the shuddering roof, the stern heresies
as rain spills over eaves, gurgling past pipes to gravity led stormwaters
I think of your secret spores numinous feet
podetial fruitings
gluey outcrops, reindeer moss of the rock face
pampering leeches, invertebrates
vegetal artefacts of empires’ decayed idioms ̶
Cladonia: meaning, from Latin : New Latin, from Late Greek kladon-,
kladōn sprout (from Greek klados)
praetermissā: (feminine, singular) meaning permitted,
neglected, overlooked
vulnerable as truth.
Again, rain hammering us to infinity,
so, a swollen river serially turns humanoid to debris
an ellipsis, dragged by tidal syntax. Cows sculpture embankments, the broken levee,
from overbrimming weirs cars get bogged, shops mud raked.
The day of the Bucha massacre brings waterfalls of torrential, dirty grief, violent rain ̶
And after, for weeks and for months, the musty waterlogged decay,
meshes of quill, cotton, fur, crust
invasion of sovereign soil, crime of genocide.
It is hard to take in this darkness, every death, every destruction a document.
I rise and walk to the slushy forest of drip pools and sequined orbs,
Light strains through canopy,
the weight of war and fiduciary wrangles
I climb down step by step, collaged and composite, armed with camera
drawing resemblances, word shapes in my breath, their floating sms
of hope ruffles digressive frills
peculiar algaes smashed, abbreviated Guernicas ̶
How the birds seem innocent of carnage, each inexplicable fact.
Herbarium specimen images were provided by The National Herbarium of New South Wales.