GOLDEN RAINTREES

In those times, beside waters

unseen by human eyes,

unmapped by longitude or latitude,

this world sank toward darkness

like a forgotten dream.

By then the stars had formed

their constellations, already aligned

bright pathways through the skies.

Cold fronts in the stratosphere

came and went, dark currents

deep in the oceans

surged like the pulse of poetic will.

Boundaries? To the southwest,

twilight’s last inflections

fanned between young peaks.

Squirrels already settled

startled in the dew

and birds took frightful wing.

Into green forests spilled the poisoned air

of eruption. The birth pangs,

self-destroying, self-creating

of a whole planet, fluorescent

in high summer’s breast,

awe and creation flaring

in the deep abyss, mountainsides

erased by hellish fire.

Now we gaze from heights

at pods of sperm whales

night and day swimming south,

migrating, hunting,

some beaching far from home.

Spring rains come swift as clouds,

dropping onto jagged, mossy rocks.

Shaded by vines, one can hear,

as if from the other side of earth,

a goddess singing soft and low,

having missed the Cambrian,

Ordovician fish, shells, corals,

late reptiles, the rise and fall of dinosaurs,

early fungi, lush grasses, giant trees.

As prophesied, she stepped into the epoch

when humans wrestled carbon,

flattened mountains, dried rivers to their beds,

made winters thunder

and summers snow, made skies fall,

leaving

this ocean’s horizon, bundled spokes

of sunlight, sweeping winds,

storms that break upon us all.

From the clefts of naked rocks arise

golden raintree forests, shifting shades.