Log decomposition research site, Blue River drainage, Oregon Cascades
By Bill Yake
Trunks, once poised and upright, collapse toward
a two-century graduation into beetle and vapor,
moss, conk, and seed bed -- their boles intermittently
chiseled by woodpeckers uncoiling their barbed tongues
and probing grub-etched galleries within. Hibernacula.
Loosened bark. Sap and heartwood riddled with crawlways
where ants stalk wood-mining fungi, where inexorable
ant-infesting mycelia reciprocate. The odor of must,
cedar disintegrating through pungency to pulp and oil.
The plush, ripe scent of continuous integration.
What seemed solid, stains and softens decade by decade,
to be torn apart by bears after ants: the flavor
on their tongues that of dull sparks. All is relentlessly
hollowed, grain by grain, cell by cell, into sponge and grub
dust, salamander refuge, slug haven, frog shelter, and moss
-- all deepening to opulent, pre-ultimate, humus and duff.
From Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place, Spring 2011.
