Poem - In the Wild Places - for Ann Harvey

In the Wild Places

I too love to forage
in the places nature reclaimed,
the formerly conquered patches
now crumbling.

It took me twenty – nine years
to find Whiskey Island,
and its beautiful old lighthouse
once used by the coast guard.
Walk unsteadily over
a crumbling grey causeway,
after hopping the fence
with “Warning! Keep Out!”
that no one pays attention to.

It’s the secret places,
in whom trees have sprung up
right through the floor tiles,
reaching up to a collapsed roof,
and sunlight.

I never made it up to the light tower,
but the lobby,
the filthy lobby
with debris and dirt and broken glass,
peeling paint
is a scene from the most fantastic movie.

I dreamt once
of visiting Chernobyl;
more specifically
the towns around it,
now a vast dead zone,
immediately abandoned.
Oh, if only that was safe.

And I imagined
visiting the many forsaken missile silos
of the Midwest.
I must do this quickly,
as some are being bought and converted
into luxury town homes.
Criminals to do such things!

The city tore down the old hospital near church;
a shame, this.
Still, there are rumors of an old asylum
in Indiana.

Where there are courtyards
let them grow into wild gardens.
Where there is glass,
let it be broken
and litter the ground.
Where plaster is cast
let it lay, crumbled.

I wonder what the supermarket will look like
in five – hundred years.
Or better yet, my house in a millennium.

Just over a hundred years ago
my entire street was one farm.
Just over a hundred years ago,
so was the forest at Findley State Park,
reclaimed green space now.

“Yes give me the wild gardens
where the flowers have decided
 where they want to grow” 1

Give me decay, greenery,
moss and lichen and trees,
the bramble, the thorn,
and the poisonous berry.
And I will smile
when I see nature conquer man,
again.

1. Ann Harvey. Oslo, Norway

Mark W.