Days of Smirr
More than mist, less than rain,
a steady seep of fine dew grays the air
for three days, soddening tree trunks
so lichens float out on black bark
in jade-green splotches like messages
scripted in milk that came to life
on parched paper under a candle flame
as from a ghostly pen. The man alone,
through with the world’s work
yet wearied with books and thoughts
grown chimerical in a tired house
groaning and hissing in wet weather
slumber, bestirs from stir-craze
murmuring “It is what it is” to venture
forth to wade waist-deep amidst
spruce saplings in a black slicker
that shines like sheer obsidian
as it beads with wet. Hooded thus,
pulling roots free from mushy ground
to thin the acre, he resembles Death
reaping sinners: I spare you, I spare you
not. “You gotta do what you gotta do,”
he mutters. But his labor’s needless,
for weed trees thrive in clusters,
smothering their weak so their strong
live to be killed by bud worms
spawning twice in their season
with the new warming. What secret
do the lichens tell? Soak enlivens algae
to speak for the fungi: We live.
“If nothing changes, nothing changes,”
sighs this old man, doing something
for something to do. Just living
like the lichens, organisms of eternity,
living on air with nothing to do.
I am, he thinks. And he remembers
the name for this misty rain.
a steady seep of fine dew grays the air
for three days, soddening tree trunks
so lichens float out on black bark
in jade-green splotches like messages
scripted in milk that came to life
on parched paper under a candle flame
as from a ghostly pen. The man alone,
through with the world’s work
yet wearied with books and thoughts
grown chimerical in a tired house
groaning and hissing in wet weather
slumber, bestirs from stir-craze
murmuring “It is what it is” to venture
forth to wade waist-deep amidst
spruce saplings in a black slicker
that shines like sheer obsidian
as it beads with wet. Hooded thus,
pulling roots free from mushy ground
to thin the acre, he resembles Death
reaping sinners: I spare you, I spare you
not. “You gotta do what you gotta do,”
he mutters. But his labor’s needless,
for weed trees thrive in clusters,
smothering their weak so their strong
live to be killed by bud worms
spawning twice in their season
with the new warming. What secret
do the lichens tell? Soak enlivens algae
to speak for the fungi: We live.
“If nothing changes, nothing changes,”
sighs this old man, doing something
for something to do. Just living
like the lichens, organisms of eternity,
living on air with nothing to do.
I am, he thinks. And he remembers
the name for this misty rain.
