Oh boy this is my favorite poem of all time. I almost had it memorized at one point., but I lost the book. allyshenandoah.wordpress.com was kind enough to post AND tag it.
The Persistence of Nature in Our Lives
Andrew Hudgins
You find them in the darker woodsoccasionally–those swollen lumps
of fungus, twisted, moist, and yellow–
but when they show up on the lawn
it’s like they’ve tracked me home.
In spring the persistence of nature in our lives
rises from below, drifts from above.
The pollen settles on my skin
and waits for me to bloom, trying
to work green magic on my flesh.
They’re indisriminate, these firs.
They’ll mate with anything.
A great green-yellow cloud of pollen sifts
across the house. The waste of it
leaves nothing out–not even men.
The pollen doesn’t care I’m not
a tree. The golden storm descends.
Wind lifts it from the branches, lofts
it in descending arches of need
and search, a grainy yellow haze
that settles over everything
as if it’s all the same. I love
the utter waste of pollen, a scum
of it on every pond and puddle.
It rides the ripples and, when they dry,
remains, a line of yellow dust
zigzagging in the shape of waves.
One night, perhaps a little drunk,
I stretched out on the porch, watching
the Milky Way. At dawn I woke
to find a man-shape on the hard
wood floor, outlined in pollen–a sharp
spread-eagle figure drawn there like
the body at a murder scene.
Except for that spot, the whole damn house
glittered, green-gold. I wandered out
across the lawn, my bare feet damp with dew,
the wet ground soft, forgiving,
beneath my step. I understood
I am, as much as anyone,
the golden beast who staggers home,
in June, beneath the yearning trees.
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