Saturday 29 March 2014

PLANT LIFE


PLANT LIFE

First is time.

Then a spatter of white

lichen like bird droppings

dotted on the hot black lava rocks.


In more time

Always time

The lichen curls and colours

coalesces, spreads slow and greedy,

silver, yellow, green and gold.


 
There is time.

Always more time

Thick stems, waxy leaves,

moist-bodied survival systems,

will shrink and hide and wait.
 

Again there is time.

Always time. More time

A dome of delicate Fibonacci sticks

netted over a tenacious lace of roots

retains a green oval leaf and a tiny yellow star.

In time it will be a green half sphere covered with faint blossom.
 

There is more time

Always time and then more time.

The silky, insidious grasses lie down humbly

ground-pressed by wind, seeded heads nodding, nodding.

Grass is life for humans who have so little time.

Sun-blackened, broken-backed by the meagre harvest,

their empty stomachs rage and ache. Soon they will be without time.

As for man, his days are as grass: As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.”


For a time.
 

Ruth Hartley Lanzarote March 2014



1 comment:

  1. I am very happy that you have actually SEEN Lanzarote, as opposed to simply going there. Plants do not know time. Over the many years I have been going there I have watched the plants gradually rebuilding. Before the volcanic explosions it was a green island with trees. Now the twisted lava fields of red and black have their own beauty.

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