In the Old Growth

A poem for trees

I wrote and first published this in August 2021 on Medium, after a trip to visit my sister on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. Old growth forests are ancient, luscious place that do things to you. If you’re ever feeling old (like I do, often these days, in LA) just remember there are trees hanging around that are 100 to 1,000 years old. Wow <3

Cloaked by a heavy mossfall.
Even when things are broken, you can still use them.
A branch, all sweatered. One of its ancillary twigs hangs limp, broken, but still cocooned close by a wrap of moss.

Even when things are broken, you can still use them.

Everything fallen and growing, just so.
What are those lower twigs on a young redwood for anyway?
For moss to hang out, to commune.
To grow between our lips some day, like Emily Dickinson says
If we’re lucky enough to return to this earth.
Bring back our borrowed bodies if they’re not taken first.

Prehistoric and futuristic twinning.
Stumps repurposed for planters, fern pots, tables and chairs for hairy critters and slithering ones.
A garden, a museum, a heaven.

Every skull is a new beginning.

Take a deep breath and step into the phloem:
Lichen, phloem, bark and fungus,
Blood, guts, fingerprints and heart,
Spores, pores, breath and fiddle heads,
Buds, detritus, mycelium, soles of feet.
We’re systems inside systems.

The compassion of the moss’s softness touches me.
It is so forgiving and I feel held. This fern become my urn.
Slug snuggles up on the stump next to the red-belted conks, I learn these mushrooms are with this free app I just quickly downloaded.
Too woody to be edible.

Woodsy and indelible.
Raven sees me. I feel seen.
How does everyone here in this forest know everything?
It’s so amazing. It’s so overwhelming. I’m at peace

They say, “It’ll be OK. It already is.”

Keep on with the keeping on and the letting go.
The unfurling and withering.
The heavy mossfall awaits us all.