I LOOKED for magic in a sycamore grove,
Off the Nada Tunnel Road in Slade, Kentucky,
That was sheltered by oaks, magnolia, and rhododendron
Where everywhere I saw magnificent perfection.
Rock, boulder, cliff,
Leaf, shrub, tree,
Bud, bark, thorn,
Branch, acorn, humus,
All
Conjoined in symbiosis
Throughout the Red River Gorge.
How, I wonder,
Does the human species fit
Into this array of goodness?
Our bodies are miracles, but our minds’ ability to disregard evidentiary consequences subverts mans’ coexistence with nature. Since the beginning, our very presence has yielded a negative effect on every plant and animal species that ever inhabited the earth. We see this, yet do not remember the lesson of balance.
Over and over again,
We forget,
To our detriment.
Instead, we celebrate our endowment of thought, problem-solving, and appropriation, imagining we are the architects of life when all we do is cause destruction.
Think about it.
Pick any action.
Imagine everything that must occur for that action to be allowed. Follow the thread to its origin and identify all the sacrifices taken from nature to enable that privilege.
Each action has an impact.
More likely, each action
Has many multiple impacts.
Daily
We disallow the reconciliation of our coexistence with earth when we stop thinking about this.
I ask the sycamores: what purpose does this disharmony serve?
If you believe in an all-knowing God, then the negative outcome of man’s presence on earth would have been purposefully formulated, or at least known, by Him. Is God like a schoolboy, mixing vinegar and baking soda, waiting for the ensuing volcanic explosion? Because there is no way an all-knowing God doesn’t know what’s coming.
Or, is all of this chance occurrence, Darwinian selection gone awry? As we kill the environment around us, we also kill ourselves, the only species on earth who negatively selects against its
Survival.
Which means our great minds haven’t served us at all, and are instead the foil to our very existence. We are separate – apart from nature, not truly a part of it at all.
And I … human, deeply wanting to understand.
Breath.
Despair.
Breath.
Hope.
The moral two-step dance of humanity.
I thank the trees, the air, the sky
And then seek forgiveness
From the moss, the lichen, the grass,
Begging them to help me
Remember.
As I trample – slowly, away from the sycamore grove.