Planta’s Plaint
I had returned to Siderea my ancestral home
spending my time hitching rides on stars,
swimming in milky ways,
zipping in and out of darkness
and thoroughly enjoying myself
from my vantage point I would drink in
Gaia’s beauty seeing her as she truly is:
a solid shimmering sphere
whirling in a translucent bubble
whose edges no one has ever seen
Of late her plaintive call
has been reverberating in my ears:
come back, come back, she’s pleaded,
and save me for my home is ailing
and my once green and brown complexion
and my turquoise eyes
are becoming pitted and grey
like an old cannon ball
Her anguish has compelled me
for without my care Gaia would just crawl back
into the dark cave that was her home
before the big explosion and the loud bang
I can’t forget I’m Planta
the spirit of all plants
without whose ethereal soul
no tree or plant or flower
would ever turn up its face
to be silvered by the moon
or lacquered by the rain
or gilded by the sun
or sprinkled by the stars
Planta, who can lift a kapok tree
eighteen stories high above its siblings
for it to count the ring of stars
girdling the equator
or drape a carpet of sunflowers
over the golden steppes of Russia
A plant spirit, aroused to life
by the gongs and chimes of past imperial temples
to dip my fingers into still ponds
shattering the morning into shards of gold
while young and old pay graceful homage
to the white crane’s timeless choreography
You humans scoff at the idea of my ensoulment
seeing in me a mere collection of cellulose
and water and chlorophyll that can be cloned
and grafted and modified into extinction
for your own very selfish ends
But I have discovered those of you
who are kindred spirits
where you tend to linger
sucking nectar from my luscious lips
in the depths of the Amazon jungle
or breathing in the sharp pungency
of my sticky needles
in the glazed forests of the Canadian North
Once a little girl spotted me
as I boldly made my way
through a crack in the pavement
in the rumbling heart of Mexico City
where the likes of us fade fast
and she plucked me and set me in a pot
on her window sill while my fragile roots
pushed their way through the damp soil
Oh how I hate it when you fall into a coma
and lament yourselves that poor so and so
has turned into a vegetable as if we
did not think or feel or move
like any other sentient being
except that we go about our business
ever so discretely
I can wrap my tendrils around lampposts
and crack boulders with my tender roots
and move sideways to avoid obstacles
and if I’m in an impish mood I will please myself
in uprooting buildings with the sheer tenacity
of my deceptive softness
If you are patient and sit very still
you can see me turn my whole body to the sun
and even watch me slowly grow
like the bearded man did while lying
on my wet carpet feeling
each glistening glowing blade
push through the soil under his bare skin
but for that
you will have to become a poet
I am the vehicle in your journey
from the living to the dead
a blanket of marigolds in India
going up in smoke with your purified soul
a carpet of red poppies and blue forget-me-nots
covering the rotting bodies
of your young men in Flanders
a jasmine in the Orient
floating away with your ancestors’ spirits
in a paper boat all the way
to the sea of eternity
Death is sad but pollution is dismal
I was once planted with thousands
of other carrots into a toxic dump
forced to digest chemicals to cleanse the soil
to be later callously burned into a heap
if you ask me
I’d rather be a dandelion
flying off with excess minerals
all the way to poor pastures
They say worms are good
for they turn the soil and aerate it
but don’t forget that without me
the innards of planets would simply burst
into pimply volcanoes and implode
into deep canyons and slide
from one continent to the next
and swell into tall mountains
like at the beginning of time
You humans mourn the slow death
to which you have condemned me
and yet you hurt me and replace me
with plastic pines for the winter solstice
and plastic leaves to gas off fake oxygen
and plastic flowers to court your lovers
and you replicate my molecular structure
in a laboratory in a vain attempt
to distil my healing properties
And yet you love me
as much as you love Gaia
which is why I have decided to return
and enlist the help
of the crazies and the tree huggers
and the visionaries and the saints
and the savants and the poets
and the just plain folk
I am your sibling vibrating to the same tune
of the celestial spheres
Mozart helps me grow fast
and Bach soothes my raw nerves
and Shankar catapults me into outer space
but unlike some of your youngsters
I can’t stand rock because it makes me
want to shrivel and die!
Don’t forget me, the plant spirit
who arose in pristine purity
from the murky waters of a stagnant pool
and reached the stars
do you want to see me
shriveled and sick
or standing tall and proud?
Look at me and see your own reflection
