by Melanie Choukas-Bradley
My nature app is as baffled as I
Along the upland trail
Above Rock Creek
In the wild wooded heart of Washington, DC
The forest floor is mantled in unfamiliar green
Paired leaves with parallel veins
An emerald carpet, enigmatic
Until recognition dawns
Sprouts of American beech, thousands
Are gathered in ritual circles
Around the smooth gray trunks of their parent trees
Who rise from the earth like standing stones
A menace is advancing
In the wake of chestnut blight
Dutch elm disease, woolly adelgid
And emerald ash borer, marching toward the capital
Beech leaf disease, as determined as Civil War General Jubal Early,
Not quite present yet but promising a deadly campaign
Could it be the Rock Creek Park beeches got word through a signal corps
Beyond our understanding, with news traveling by root or forest atmosphere?
If only we had known what was coming for us
And thrown down our own green gauntlet
Melanie Choukas-Bradley lives in the beautiful yet besieged capital city of Washington, DC. She is the author of City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park and Wild Walking. Many of her poems have appeared in The New Verse News.