Soul of The Earth

FROM SMALL CATASTROPHES: AFTER READING MARKO POGACNIK

"The language of direct physical experience, conveyed through natural catastrophes, remains the main recourse open to elemental beings trying to warn us against the abyss into which we are about to plunge."

 - Marko Pogacnik

PLANE TREE

In the clangor of cement mixers and trucks

paving over soft, sandy paths in the park,

a little urban planner, well-meaning fixer-upper,

came toting his clipboard and tape measure.

Rattling out his flaccid tool to their ruckus,

he pulled and plied it along my most magnificent branch.

Sticking out mid-trunk, lank and uncharted,

my limb pointed towards a grassy lane, a ruined palace.

Like no other branch, knobby as an old wrist

kissed by a wood wife, it twisted into space, stretching out 8 meters

then spiked straight up: connector, conductor,

divining for power, directing it heavenwards.

“Irregular” was the one word the little man scribbled

on his blue-lined pad, on his flipping clipboard.

Belching gases, the revving chainsaw in his puny hands

bit into my branch, vying for my power.

It was like cutting off the climax of a symphony—

Beethoven the village band strained over

under my shade. Tête à tête, the town folk listened,

laid out on the grass, until I made Hades rumble,

clouds heave and foam through molten sky.

It was like no baton to conduct the Pastoral,

no wand to conjure a thunderhead, no hand

to compose an untidy billet doux.

He struck away my most intrepid part,

leaving a fresh wound, tingling with phantom pains.

Fitfully, they shoot into the air, spilling darkness

onto the hardened path his men pave overtop my roots.