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Mar 08, 2001
Litter
Another storm come and gone; Winter continues as before,With persistence more than force
The snow retreats, revealing layers underneath
Leaves that fell the Fall before blanket forest floors in brown
Assume the attitude of death, congruent with the soil
Here is a world unlooked at, but with the diversity of a rain forest.
It's the slain forest; the front line of decay.
Its denizens too small for us to see, we know them by their actions, or rather their results.
The more they do, the less there is.
What was gets broken down: macro-form lost as constituent particles rescind allegiance to larger outlines, following a finer course.
Things disappear.
Yet the litter remains.
Even in Summer it can be found, in hollows at the roots of trees, blown beneath the underbrush, strewn along the banks of streams.
Tons of it fall yearly, and the material cycles through the ecosystem, no doubt. We are assured that nothing's ever truly lost, at least as far as particles go, but last year, and the year before, are gone, and which year's leaves now lie here is hard to say. Sometimes it seems those of the Red Oak are indestructible, but there are never so many lying as ever have fallen.
Surely, they have built the soil here, in concert with the microbes, arthropods, worms, fungi, and other things, some of them nameless, engaged in processes we usually ignore, though they go on all the time...
Even so, we are losing ground. Literally.
On the steep slopes, and the well trod ways, pummeled under force of foot or flood, torn by wheel and claw, the soil continues to erode.
All the mulching that the maintenance crews can do is not enough to match the abrasion that this place endures. Its roots are loose in thinning soil that threatens to slip off the Manhattan bedrock, the last living plot draining away into the city that consumes it. The lovers and the users of the Park destroy it, even as they build it up.
A hundred Summers full of leaves have lain, and Winter hugs the ground as close as ever.
A thin sheet on a cold bed.