Indian Pipe
photo by Mari H. Hall

A Tale of Two Orchids

Epipactus Helleborine
Platanthera Psycodes

Orchids both
descended from a grain
of pollen
borne on the wing
of a stingless bee
captured in the resin
of a tree
twenty million years ago.

Twenty million years ago
and they were old then
trampled long before
by dinosaurs.
the family orchids
burst upon a landscape
human eyes have never known.

Epipactus helleborine
Platanthera psycodes
orchids both
blossoming
like testes
on this summer day
in these my woods
where I stand
in a sea of ferns
my senses charmed
by a single tongue
of purple
dripping dewdrops
one by one
like crystals
on the prism
of my lens.

Platanthera psycodes,
the psychotic
psychedelic
of a plant
ignites
these green ferns.
This Small Purple Fringed Orchid
in my magnifying glass of colors
could melt away
the pain of childbirth
and soothe the tired calves
of a people
who walked these hills
before the white man came.

Platanthera psycodes
Epipactus helleborine
members both
of the family orchids
thousands strong
on every continent
surviving only
through the grace
of mushrooms
and sweet solitude.

Helleborine
roadside orchid
of the tiny blossoms
green and brown
and maybe yellow
to some eyes.

Helleborine
carried to these my woods
by a European
just a century ago
looking now
for that singular alliance
berween fungi,
seed, and light.

Helleborine
just another family orchid
in the streets of downtown Boston
and Karachi, Pakistan.
High in the Himalaya.
Russia, Bhutan, Cyprus,
Turkey, Lebanon,
it knows no bounds
but the grace of mushrooms
and sweet solitude.

Epipactus helleborine
Platanthera psycodes
(now I know their Latin names)
Orchids both
they bloom today.

In the presence
of these plants
plagues have come and gone
wars been lost and won,
mountains moved and children born,
men have sailed the seas
in search of gold and God,
walked on the moon
and launched rockets off to Mars,
we have settled lands
and started farms
in the presence of these plants
we baptize our young
we pray for ourselves
we bury our dead,
in the presence of these plants
we laugh, we sing, we dance
in the presence of these plants
the family orchids
love seeks
a singular alliance
between flesh and soul and life.

And here,
in these my woods today,
two orchids bloom.

Field Notes

07.20.09
I am sitting on the logged stump of a once great white pine, in the midst of laurel, royal ferns, marsh ferns, and beech tree stump sprouts. The beavers have created an opening in the canopy here. I turn my face to the sun. A cherry tree that they felled is hung up against a red maple. This place has become a crossroads in the thicket of swamp that surrounds me. I can hear the blue herons cackling on the marsh, the yellowthroat is defending his territory, a bull frog twangs. The air sticks to my skin. There is moisture everywhere and yet there are no mosquitoes. It is strange. They are such a part of this landscape, I wonder why they are missing. There are very few bats this year. White nose syndrome has decimated their population. They eat mosquitoes. There are also fewer swallows. They, too, eat mosquitoes. It has rained constantly. The mosquitoes should be unbearable. Yet there are very few. What does that mean for the habitat as a whole? Is that why there are fewer swallows? What role do mosquitoes play in the ecology of this wetland? They are a nuisance. A danger even, with encepalitis, malaria, and West Nile virus, but they are more a part of this place than I am. Where are they?

There is coyote scat beside me on the stump. There is gold thread at my feet. There is such green abundance all about me, that it overwhelms me. I am at a loss for words in the thick of this northern rain forest. The longer I sit, the more I see, the more I hear, the more I become a part of these woods. This is my neighborhood. My Broadway and 92nd street. My Southie. My barrio. How many people on this planet are sitting in green this morning?

A beech leaf drifts gently to the floor. Why did it fall? There is a reason for everything here. A laurel leaf beside me has been chewed. There is a bird dropping beside it. I followed a bear's trail to this place. This clearing is alive with stories. A logger, the beavers, a moose, birds, bears, deer, and insects unknown and too numerous to count. I could spend a lifetime in this universe and still not know it.
A bumble bee buzzes by.

This is my laboratory. This is my study. This is my office. My camo is my business suit. A noise beside me startles me and my heart jumps. My skin crawls. A rush of adrenaline surges through me. What will I do if it is a bear? I know they are safe, but they are big and they are wild. Walk backwards slowly all the books say. Whatever you do, don't run. But I can't get the fact out of my brain that black bears like to play ball with human heads. A breeze rustles the cattails and then the beech leaves. A mosquito scouts my hand for a place to drill. I pack my pen and slip back into the green.

Field Notes

07.11.09
Cattails rustle in the breeze, the only movement on the marsh this morning. Sounds of an angry duck. A couple of bullfrogs. A pair of yellow-throated warblers guarding their nest in the shrub willows. I sit on the bank and smell the warmth coming off the water. A rich earthy scent of moisture and decay. I know that nothing will reveal itself until I become a part of the landscape. I must be still and wait, inspite of the mosquitoes. That is what it is to be a naturalist. There are two basic ingredients. One, intense curiosity, and two, the ability to sit quietly and observe.

I have my perches in these woods. I have followed a beaver trail to this open spot above the marsh. A chorus of bullfrogs draws my attention. I have not heard as many in one spot in a long time.

The cattails have both male and female parts now. It is time to collect pollen for pancakes. The wind picks up and blows the mosquitoes away. Small clouds of yellow pollen rise like smoke from the cattail spike. Pollination occurs before my eyes as the breeze dies and the pollen settles on the lower female part of the spike. I think about moving on to my next station, where I can get a better look at the entire marsh, but I am reluctant to alert the neighborhood to my presence again as everything has settled back into its routine.

It is so beautiful here. That, too, is part of the experience. We were put here on this earth to witness beauty, and I must acknowledge my own rapture. A goldfinch squeaks above me.

I move on and get caught up in a heron feeding ritual before I can even get to my next stop. Their cackling calls me and I watch the three juveniles follow an adult to the edge of a beaver lodge. There is a huge commotion. Beaks clack as they vie for food from the adult's mouth. My arms grow tired holding the binoculars as the clacking and cackling continues. The adult regurgitates on a pile of mud and sticks and there is a feeding frenzy as the gangly young ones go for it. The adult raises its head above the fray and the youngsters are up once again reaching for its beak. They are very demanding in their pursuit of food. I imagine the adult must feel a bit like a mother who is ready for her kids to leave home and fend for themselves. The adult finally departs and the three juveniles stay behind on the lodge. I relax my watch until I hear the cackling once again and another adult comes swooping in. The feeding is not over yet. Once again the clacking of beaks ensues. The regurgitation. The feeding frenzy. But this adult does not have the patience of the first one and escapes the quickly escapes the clutch of the chicks. Once sated, the young ones quietly disperse. The first flies up over the waters and the nest, defecates in the air, and then alights on a log not far from the beaver lodge. An adult comes to sit with it, but doesn't stay long. The two other juveniles hang together on the lodge, one at each end. Stillness returns to the marsh. Two wood ducks parade past. Two turtles sun on a rock, too far away for my binoculars to identify them.

The clouds move in. I must get home to get my laundry off the line. I take one last sweep with my binoculars and move on my way. I am not a part of this world. I know.

Bear Bones

Bear bones and Bach
turn Sunday
into ordered fragments
of sound anatomy.

"I hate Nature."
I tell my wife
when the cat
deposits a bird
on the kitchen floor.

I Hate Nature.

I sit
my back against
a hemlock
scarred by claws.

I trace
the tiny teeth marks
on the body
of a bear's bone.

A genius
strikes a note
on a grand piano
with its legs cut short.

One note.

We are both
predator and prey
all life must eat
like the cat
at my feet
and the bear
whose bones
I hold
like the genius
and me.

Life thrives on death.

I am cursed
because I know that.

The pianist
strikes another note.

I watch
a merganser
and her hooded chicks
run on water.
Most of them will die
before they fly.

I Hate Nature.

I hate him
because he takes
the order from my life.

Predator and prey
do not exist.
Strong and weak
we all die
just the same.

Yet sound
lives on forever
one note
one note
one note
echoing
through
time.

GUTs

The Grand Unification Theory:
at extremely high energy
everything becomes One.

I stare
at a rock wall
ten thousand feet
of red layers
fill all space
before me.

Particles
spin and polarize
everything becomes real
when differences are measured.

The smell of death
rises from a corpse
in the first heat
of spring.

Each point in space
is a simple harmonic oscillator
even a vacuum
has a vastly complex structure.

A massive star
explodes
in a burst of energy
ten seconds long
that travels
thirteen billion
light years
through 95 percent
of all existence
of all time and space
through all forms
of matter
energy
and momentum
to meet us
four hundred years
after Galileo
first gazed
through the lens
of a telescope.

This star
born of an infant universe
was thirty times
the size of our sun
one million years old
it died
600 million years
after energy
coalesced in one
Big Bang.

This universe
this home
feeds on dark energy
that expands
while the rock
before me rises
inch by inch
second by second
into something
greater than itself.

When one of a pair
of particles
is pulled into a
Black Hole
everything becomes real.

Zero point energy
and spontaneous symmetry.

At extremely high energy
everything becomes one.

My wife is turning
sixty.

The Edge

Before Life
supercontinents
floated
on a crust
of molten lava.

I skirt
a marsh
opening
to spring.

Two otters
snake
the dark waters
in the morning sun.

A merganser
fluffs
his great white hood
wags his wings
and walks on water
while a female,
unimpressed,
continues pulling
at the cattails.

There is no
common language
not even between lovers.

Geese honking
open up the sky
to imbedded thunderstorms
that change the winds
while ice melts
like glaciers
calving into
chocolate waters
to be surfed
by madmen
with a brushfire
of words
unleashed by
continents colliding
450 million years ago
in the crosscuts of I-90
they leave their marks.

We all want to be known
as we leave ourselves
in stone
in bones
in ashes
turned to Earth
a barred owl calls.