BJZ Poems and Musings

Elms lining a street in Detroit. Source: detroityes.com

In considering the national debate and attention to human immigrants to the US, I took a step back to think about immigration writ large. What about flora and fauna immigration? What about the migration of the continents of our planet? Out of those larger perspectives came this poem.

Immigrants

They say a squirrel in the 1600’s
Could hop from chestnut to chestnut,
Carolina to Maine,
Never touch the ground.
Gone, that canopy, to fungal blight;
Invader from Asia, late 1800’s,
1940 – not a chestnut in sight.

Then the elms, gracing Main Streets
Suffered a similar plight;
Too the ash trees, an emerald borer
From abroad.
Hemlocks, beeches in this next
Invasion of nasty immigrants
Attached to our commerce.

Great measures generated,
Eradicating what we brought in.
Fungicides, pesticides, injections;
Isolate the infections – mostly for naught.
Oaks and gingkoes line Main Street
Maples look nervously about.
And yet,

Other immigrants, marvelous impact –
Alfalfa, timothy grass, white clover,
Winter wheat – not indigenous,
Brought also on those ships;
Queen Anne’s lace; Bradford pear,
Eucalyptus. Sprucing up the continent
CCC planted millions of Norwegians.

Migration of plants, people, insects, in
This man-shrunk world;
The good, the bad, all connected.
Continents moving, plates shifting
Recall Pangea if you may,
All are immigrants on this Earth
If an eon is but a day.

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