Our understanding of our world is orders of magnitude richer than just a few years ago. Journalists work to connect the public with scientific work, many writing luminous, accessible books that sweep us into new comprehensions, new appreciations for the complexity that life encapsulates.



But words are merely symbols. They draw a perimeter around a feeling for which there is no language.* 



Eden Burning



In the morning

     the wreckage might still smolder  

     spots rekindle

     bright and burning,

     the sky

     crystal blue.



The raging advance

     an avalanche of heat,

     sparks, smoke

     the very ground

     erupting

     peat of centuries

feeding the insatiable beast:

     the outline of Kuan Yin

     glimpsed in veils of smoke.



Afterward there might

     be spores surviving 

green limpets unfurling.

There might be rain.

     a tendency of the garden

toward that which gardens do.



Weeks or months

later

there might be green tufts

replacing scorched scalps

a transformation of us

to resemble that which burned

Or the race might be all

     green-eyed 

    in a hundred years:

green-thumbed,

green-skinned

teeth gone green

or nostrils turned to the

     scent of green.

Something remarkable might

     happen

after Eden burning.



        (-Karen Fitzgerald, 11.2002)

 *(Paraphrased from Zoë Schlanger, p. 248, The Light Eaters.)