"lichens" poems
White-furred hill flowers bow
Gust-bent,
Wet in April snow,
Lavender beneath their
Downy coats.
Tender soldiers of spring
Grasp wind-blown gravel steeps,
Stand to beckon brown grass,
Soft-call the life in sapless trees
To ring with green again
Against Old Bully Winter’s
Blustering.
Quaking aspens,
Earliest to leaf in yellow-green,
Curling grama grasses,
Tough food for buffalo,
Cannot boast first life each Montana spring;
Only zombie-lichens,
Rock-fast mosses
Throw off winter’s death
Before the crocus' rise.
On eastern Montana hills
No street-hemmed dandelions
Colonize in chute-dropped ranks;
No time-tamed tulips
Live on wind-round knolls.
Here, the yucca’s bayonet-sharp ******
Here, the wild onions’ scent-strong hold;
But these arrive after early chill,
Following the purple crocus on the hill.
Jan 4, 2012
Jan 4, 2012 at 8:36 AM UTC
Hey Human! I am your Sibling.
Queen bee wings are Ripped,
bee niblings are Smoked
For Your Honey Sweet.
Hey human! Listen your Sibling’s Buzz.
Tiger lost bones for Medicine,
Fox lost fur for Fashion,
Sharks lost fins for Soup.
Hey human! Do Not Butcher Siblings.
Simba’s life is not your Trophy,
Jumbo’s tusks are not Decors,
Helmets of Hornbills are not jewels.
Hey human! Do Not Reap Siblings.
Emperors of ice continent lost land,
Economics is making Amazon less,
Logging makes Orangutans homeless.
Hey human! Do Not Invade Siblings.
Warm oceans bleach corals,
Water depleted in cities,
We ingest plastic regularly.
Hey human! Do Not Desert the Earth.
Overfishing is holocaust of aquatic life,
Livestock levitates toxic emissions.
Hey human! Do Not Prey on Siblings.
Lichens stunned by pollution,
Symbionts are disintegrating,
Biodiversity is declining.
Hey human! Be Together with Siblings.
Hey Human! We are Offsprings of Mother Nature.
Monera, Animalia, Fungi, Plantae, Protista
all have common roots.
We are branches of the one Phylogenetic Tree
rooting Common Ancestry unto LUCA.
Hey Human! We are Siblings.
Hey Human! Recall your Siblings.
Hey Human! Revive your Siblings.
Jul 20, 2019
Jul 20, 2019 at 11:19 AM UTC
The Red Rain of Kerala wrote this Plague
Un-supported by Evidence and Song
As it wept and bled that once-thirsty Plain
Locals knew their throats will not dry too long
But how could they drink this very strange Guilt
When their Sheets un-furled like the Flags of War
And not until the Google-Heads came in
They realised it was foreign before
Samples were taken in pursuit of Cause
Then page by page those Suspects came to light
Was it Bacteria? Or Lichens-at-Lost
Either way there was some Blood to incite.
When those Findings end, much was to conclude
Which Creation's Purchase falls upon you.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 4:16 PM UTC
The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.
And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you've been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens. For Time is
nothing if not amenable.
The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
--Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.
4.2k
They cling to the earth
like lichens
in deep meditation
Lophophora williamsii.
Fallen warriors sprinkled
throughout the blackbrush and mesquite
there in the valley of the Rio Grande.
They whisper to you
as you roam that arid slab of ground
and spin like Van Gogh
in the night sky
while you sleep.
They call you this way
and that
lead you in directions
you did not intend.
In the dry washes
beware
rattlesnakes wait in every thin patch
of shade
and at night
lightning switches the lights on
and off
and on again.
Once the spirit
of this unassuming succulent
enters into you
accepts you
uplifts you
the sky opens
and reveals the pulsing heart of
God's creation
speaking softly in tongues
heard only at the beginning.
It is glory then.
Jun 18, 2016
Jun 18, 2016 at 10:13 PM UTC
Brilliant, this day – a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green –
whether it's ferns or lichens or needles
or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes –
greener than ever before. And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for the blessing,
a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along
the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.
3.3k
I knew a man once who could read the trees
He'd stand in a field with nothing on
And look at them for hours
(He couldn't talk to flowers)
But he would pour over every branch
Trace every knot and feel their bark
He translated a sycamore for me once
But oaks and beeches were his favourite
He said he just preferred their type.
The elbow bends told him of seasons
The trunk's tilt told the prevailing winds
Their denseness in relation to their neighbours
Told him all manner of gossipy things.
The colours and the hues told of the soil
The moulds and lichens the local fashions
He'd tell you if they'd ever been frightened
By hippies, chainsaws, axes or lightening.
And as I looked on, I realised something
As I read his naked body with no clothes
This man was obviously a stark raving lunatic.
Jan 23, 2012
Jan 23, 2012 at 8:31 AM UTC
Hidden, oh hidden
in the high fog
the house we live in,
beneath the magnetic rock,
rain-, rainbow-ridden,
where blood-black
bromelias, lichens,
owls, and the lint
of the waterfalls cling,
familiar, unbidden.
In a dim age
of water
the brook sings loud
from a rib cage
of giant fern; vapor
climbs up the thick growth
effortlessly, turns back,
holding them both,
house and rock,
in a private cloud.
At night, on the roof,
blind drops crawl
and the ordinary brown
owl gives us proof
he can count:
five times--always five--
he stamps and takes off
after the fat frogs that,
shrilling for love,
clamber and mount.
House, open house
to the white dew
and the milk-white sunrise
kind to the eyes,
to membership
of silver fish, mouse,
bookworms,
big moths; with a wall
for the mildew's
ignorant map;
darkened and tarnished
by the warm touch
of the warm breath,
maculate, cherished;
rejoice! For a later
era will differ.
(O difference that kills
or intimidates, much
of all our small shadowy
life!) Without water
the great rock will stare
unmagnetized, bare,
no longer wearing
rainbows or rain,
the forgiving air
and the high fog gone;
the owls will move on
and the several
waterfalls shrivel
in the steady sun.
3.2k
Oft I remember those I have known
In other days, to whom my heart was lead
As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
As graves with grasses are, and at their head
The stone with moss and lichens so o’er spread,
Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them? After long years.
Do they remember me in the same way,
And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
And yet the root perennial may be.
3.1k
Desperate limbs drape themselves in the exact same shade of undiluted greengreengreen that we've seen in stagnant pools and empty hearts. A tiny verdant forest of lichens and moss to mask the barren grey of a self inflicted winter. Fingers cast out towards the sky grow thin and wretched with the desperate, exhaustive need need need to ****** the light from the sky. Forgotten are the mouldering piles of discarded stars laying around its feet. I think of that girl as I pick up a damp leaf and carefully press it between love poems and silent reveries.
Feb 4, 2015
Feb 4, 2015 at 10:37 AM UTC
on this rumbling
stretch of tundra
no trees reach up
to soothe the sky
there is a pulling down
of wind tunnel vortex
like conifers in reverse
an icy howl
in the bonechill
of time
Translucent holes,
perfectly round, are dug
in glacial archeology
and in the sea below
gelid creatures lurk,
half-frozen
in the history of my
soul
Only moss and lichens
grow on the rock,
somehow softening the
rugged textures
of the wild landscapes
that seethe
just beneath my skin
and there, just
shy of the surface
is a quickening
a subtle pulse of veins
that pumps life
between the gales of
my heart's steppes
flushing out
the pain
somewhere
deep
within the private lotus
of my being
folioles unfurl
leafy shapes around
my organs
wrapping them like gifts
as they undulate in whorls
opening my petals
in renewed consciousness
and deliberation
as a new kind of
stamen
rises
dusty pollen
powdery
budding ripeness
bursting up
and out
of my deepest
centered
whirlpool pistil
nectar dripping
in viscous webs,
to be caught upon
the tongue of
a new dawning
My silky outer
wings of vegetation,
slender stalks of
filaments and anther
have been turned
into hot steel
They protect
the tender vulnerable
when burned
as poison words held up to my
watchful eyes,
are properly discerned
I give myself over
to this new power,
my back arched to fully embrace
what is to come,
a universe calling thunder,
the old patterns undone
I am ready
to reveal my all
as the goddess deep within
comes to release my gold
suffusing light through skin
conjured from me
a relentless strength,
ever-growing,
now tenfold
rising way past
soft-lit stratospheres
and orbiting
to
bold
Nov 5, 2017
Nov 5, 2017 at 6:05 PM UTC
God made me into a marionette
He pulled me from the dust
He scooped me out of coals.
He breathed life into my belly
and now they call me animated earth.
He carved my bones from alabaster stones
long buried under piles of pine needles and leaves
He sang songs of Light and Life
and put them in my ears
and taught me all the words
and cut me silver keys.
now i stand up tall
like the Lighthouse of Alexandria
or the Colossus of Rhodes
i take showers under jungle waterfalls
full of orchid petals
and with angel fish climbing up the rock walls.
my head and all my limbs are hanging by
golden silken strings and threads
and where I walk the moss and lichens grow.
He fashioned my eyes from glass
blown over the hot geysers
and sulfur springs
of thermopylae
and the salt basin dunes.
He plucked my pupils from the pregnant blackness
of the Void.
He struck them over steel and flint
and the sparks made it bright enough to see.
my heart is a time-piece
keeping minutes with its beats
like a great shadow cast behind a sphere.
the elements once kept me apart from me my identity,
I was a hungry ghost
walking around town like a hypodermic voodoo doll.
everytime I turned around
I tripped over another basket full of rattlesnakes
hissing from both ends.
I gave up and crossed my heart
and gave it over to the chemical egregore
hoping I would die while somehow staying alive
and learning how to fly away home-
so i could leave all the piles of ashes and teeth alone
and maybe plant a rose garden.
but God made of me a marionette
strung me up from strings of silken gold.
He breathes for me,
and dances me to the music of the spheres
and now the whole planet is a
Hanging Garden of the Fallen Babylon
and now I keep snakes
as exotic pets
and as company
when i’m lonely
and for afternoon tea.
May 21, 2022
May 21, 2022 at 5:16 PM UTC
The shutters are rusted open on the north
kitchen window ivy has grown over
the fastenings the casements are hooked open
in the stone frame high above the river
looking out across the tops of plum trees
tangled on their steep slope branches furred
with green moss gray lichens the plums falling
through them and beyond them the ancient
walnut trees standing each alone on its
own shadow in the plowed red field full
of amber September light after so
long unattended dead boughs still hold
places of old seasons high out of the leaves
under which in the still day the first walnuts
from this last summer are starting to fall
beyond the bare limbs the river looks
motionless like the far clouds that were not
there before and will not be there again
2.1k
green forest child
you grow in sponge drenched soils
drawing me in - an epiphyte longing
sunlight piercing raindrops
of lettuce lichens drinking
mosses soaked, greening
softly underfoot
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 5:11 PM UTC
Faded gilding, rubbed through to cracking, flaking wood.
A glamour of ages, sliding, flies to the breeze.
The little bird perches on a once-fine moulding;
Head tilted, one bright eye turned towards the mantle
where a half-blind mercurised mirror barely reflects
an army of creeping vines, consuming naked angels
and the God of this house.
Our hero’s velvets are ruined, dripping and eaten through.
Where riches have lived, decay succeeds.
Nature’s velvets; opulent mosses and emerald lichens
are devouring damask
and smoothing over marbled hardness.
The bird listens for footsteps.
The lady would scatter crumbs on the windowsill
and he would flutter, unafraid,
to peck at her sweet feast.
Once, she drew him.
Fine-lining passerine delicacy,
her pencils fetched him,
and bestowed him an artist’s nobility.
He turned, this way and that,
flashing gold-touched wings,
miming a duchess snapping open a fan.
She’s gone now,
and so have the crumbs.
The bird senses no sugar on the sill,
nor the faintest reminiscence
of lavender perfume, glittering as star bursts
at the hollow of her throat.
He sings regardless,
a mournful beauty
longing to return to a glorious, lustful age,
where light refracted in cut crystal,
danced upon frescoes
and illuminated the ugly –
- to render them enchanting.
He swoops to dance on the mantle,
answered by the mirror
and sits a while, preening.
The gentlemen and ladies are gone forever.
Ejected from history to echo as ghosts of fancy and excess,
undeserving of remembrance or pity.
The bird will never forget.
And knots up secrets
kept tightly in his breast,
committed to his tiny, fierce heart.
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 5:15 PM UTC
Part I
*Here she lies,
Underneath the cloudless skies,
In the Churchyard full of graves,
Near the frothy- foamy waves.
Dead. . . is everyone that saw her when she died,
The same ones that cared and cried,
Lady Jane Of England.
Here rests her body upon the lap of earth,
Underneath the elm and buried in the turf,
Dead Lady Of England.
Her grave covered with lichens and moss,
And it is true her head she lossed,
Poor Lady Of England.*
~Marian~
Nov 1, 2012
Nov 1, 2012 at 12:24 AM UTC
I sat beneath a silver maple split
in two, yet still growing.
Dead leaves and nestlings
chirping like quick fire sirens
settled in the vein-like branches
above. The maple's cracked
canyon bark was dotted
with yellow lichens like distant
city lights.
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 6:28 PM UTC
Flying through the sky with you
Anything was possible
Lichens swirled around us
And we swirled around one another
Tree bark crumbled and fell
Though maybe it was just old reservations
Two tabs of acid
Two sets of lips
One afternoon
And one unbreakable friendship
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 12:18 AM UTC
In the beguiling romance of a flower
as it grows like lichens up a tower
A melancholic thought does rise,
born deep into the grey-green eyes
of a boy, who's song he forgot how to play.
So alone he sits, indoors all day.
The thought itself does manifest
into homesickness of the family crest
a malady of ferocious discord
from into which the boy had been born,
It was not an affliction that is caught.
Dreaming of life, this boy is from the north.
Aug 16, 2011
Aug 16, 2011 at 4:43 PM UTC
pink dressers and
the way your eyes are tinged red after you cry
blue heart shaped boxes
i pictured purple
and saw the night of my first stay
shades of colors
sky yellow
sky orange
i prefer sunrises
i prefer sunrises
i know myself
better than anyone else
you will learn
my appreciation for the earth
you will see my ability
to whisper into petals
catch dragon flies with the stillness of my being
support a caterpillar in his journey for the perfect leaf.
i may be in space
but i can touch you from there
light-years away and i promise the sunshine stroking your face is still very much alive.
i wish to climb rocks and run my
fingertips over lichens
sing to a bird
click my tongue
chipmunks running into the palms of my hands
i am free
in the shifting of the leaves
forest floor and tiny frogs.
star light
comets
i am the universe
and you love me.
Mar 6, 2013
Mar 6, 2013 at 12:16 AM UTC
Your love is hard
like rocks
in my belly
in the morning;
like starting the countdown
to a three-day drunk
a week later,
at every turning point,
every shadow
of an angle,
I am taking roads
I have never
crossed,
I am watching
water run
in crystalline rivers
toward alleys
I've never known.
When they ask me
for money
or Marlboros,
I say yes,
please,
I would like those too.
I would like to eat
bagels
in the sun
with crinkly paper in my teeth
and sour cream cheese
sweetening in the liquor.
My landscaper's shoulders
and granite deltoids
are now green with lime
and lichens.
Girls like to run
their
hands over them;
but they are hungry
for your hands
and the lavishing footsteps
of your fingernails.
When I wake up
I put enough water in the
coffee-maker
for about
twenty cups,
and enough
***** in those
twenty cups
for a three-day drunk.
Your love is hard like ice-cold *****
and boiling coffee
that
mutilates tastebuds
and
makes my belly feel real good.
But not talking to you for awhile;
it's easier to warm up in the morning
so I can cool down at night,
and by the pink dawn
of darkness
I could get back to working my belly
with ***** rocks, and
Marlboros.
Feb 25, 2012
Feb 25, 2012 at 12:01 PM UTC
Listen
to these green plants
pleading
beseeching
you would think
they'd be used to it by now
but every year the same old thing
look the rain is finished folks
you're on your own now
nine months before the next shower
this is how leaves suffocate
see the gray dust clogging their pores
hear them choking
under a wind thrown blanket
this is how they drown
brittle and crackling the grasses
soon the weight
of a starving grasshopper
will be enough to snap
them
shrubs will dump
their curled up castoffs
earthwards
scribbled twigs alone
will remain
from now on
only the thieving airplants
will thrive
viral invaders
******* sap from reluctant hosts
who can ill afford
to accommodate them
now patient rocks
are emerging from cover
each a palette of vivid lichens
sundecks for snakes and lizards
now that the clamouring grass
is gone
the land lies baking
withdrawn
curling
into herself
even the air
sighs
slumps
soon fire will come
to cannibalise
the undergrowth
play chasey
through the dry grass
send ants scurrying
downstairs
flip a nod
to the big old cactuses
tickle the toes
of the mesquites-
who will stand stoic
observing the pillage
around their hot feet
and shrug
resigned
seen it all before
they are above it all really
fire
will play homage
to their indifference
lay down
a black velvet carpet
wind
will whistle up
tiny tornadoes of ash
to pirouette
and perish
everyone
will accept the inevitable
eventually
and just knuckle down
to wait it out
in a state of trance
floating
on a dream
of rain
Tricia Lambert
Mexico
Nov 2010
Sep 18, 2011
Sep 18, 2011 at 10:07 AM UTC
taken under by the swell
dragged and punched by
a wave
[too] high
to climb so far above
to the crest
who needs sea-foam
anyway
its mostly ******* air
hot to drop
to the coolest depths
and be covered over
ill be turned on
over
to reveal the barnacles and moss
taking lichens for a walk now
mon-tue
only twenty clams
Nov 27, 2014
Nov 27, 2014 at 12:51 AM UTC
See this gray dust
Swirling
It is the ground bones of ancestors
They are in my nostrils
And on my tongue
They congregate in my ears
Where they chatter lightheartedly
And beat their drums
In rhythms syncopated
With my heartbeat
Oh yes, my blood recognizes that tattoo
They clump under my toenails
And collect in the creases
Of my withering skin
If I sit long enough in one spot
They will engulf me
Cover me in a fine quiet shroud
I shall succumb to their insistence
And surrender without fuss
Soon enough
Sun shall crack me open
Desiccation shall be my lot
My bones will give back the light
Insidious lichens shall colonise me
Insects explore my crevices
Corroded, scoured by indifferent winds
I shall slump with a final sigh
No body, aaaaah
Then
I too shall blow about
On the breeze
I shall be no more
Than an irritating speck
In the eye of a grand child
Carrying marigolds.
Tricia Lambert.
On November 2nd, Dia de los muertos, Mexicans honour their ancestors and recently dead, with elaborate shrines in homes and public places. Families visit cemeteries, taking food and flowers, noticeably marigolds, and the celebrations are loud and long.
Oct 4, 2011
Oct 4, 2011 at 7:33 AM UTC