The bootsole skids down across the fallen trunk,
negating nature. Khaki, yellow, grey combined
to make the moss’s singular green, now slashed
where the whole spectrum’s been absorbed.
What changes? Temperature, angle,
most of all the way the bark interacts
with what it feeds as it decays.
Here, where clouds can seem more solid than rocks
and water can grow faster than insects,
here the very concept of paradox
is turned on its head. Two thousand generations
have known the rainforest both commands and enables respect. Here what lives
because of the bark is a soft chain of life.
(from ‘Rainforest Triptych’)