such as farming may occur continuously on a single site for
years. Eventually, however, the farm may be abandoned. ... б
Once a disturbance has ceased, a process of ecological change
begins. The disturbed area represents a new habitat available
for plants and animals to colonize. Often, the physical conditions
of disturbed habitats are severe.
A Field Guide to Ecology of Eastern Forests
Red Maple
Acer rubrum
Four plates of raw
iron, folded over one
another, could not, they saw,
contain the world.
The world did not mind:
turning, it looked
as a child would, to itself,
and found a game in the muck
a mare's hooves made
as she stamped and cried.
When the plates split,
a foal descends, and her pain
is not everything it
knows: the leggy
cluster prancing
under cirrus
celebrates an awkwardness—
honor to the universe
the hole I came from
sends forth to eat.
Wobble-legs falls.
Gets up, different. Its red-green
flower: adder's-tongues, flawed
trumpets, baby-
squalls of flower-birds:
the spring wind shakes
it through ten thousand forms,
forms falling through themselves like
a train station
departure board's
rain of changes.
Foal grows then, knows harness.
Being tightens to one thing
and another—
and when the train comes,
its works are done.
Lying lightly on the grey
mud of the old carriage road,
or pressed by boot
soles into the mud,
confetti, red
paper for a celebration:
a branch coughs in the wind,
the flowers give
up their attachments.
