The Violence of the Rainforest
The violence of the rainforest is slow
A tropical dance of death
A slow motion conga of
Glacial garrotting, woody twists and knots and turns,
Plaited hangman's nooses,
Gargoyle roots and towering ferns
Or
A cold-burn of waxen shapes in love
Strangler Figs embracing eucalyptus
Trees twisted together for hundreds of years
One feeding on the other
Until the embraced-one,
Like the spider's spouse
falls away
Without ever any movement being perceived by the
Biped passing by
Who thinks these trees are like dead things, without motive or passions
Little do we who live as fast as insects seem to us
Notice the frenzy
But, if we were eternal beings
We might look down and see a blur
Of motion
Shoots surging to meet the light
Straightening saplings racing vertically alongside old giants
Old giants shaking their hoary heads inside the clouds
Fast as loosened ropes, the vines drop down from the fig-seed
silently beside the leviathons,
Then twirl like serpents,
wrapping the tree in an instant of time
so fast or so slow - it amounts to the same thing -
That you cannot see it happening
Like some corset designed by a torturer
To pass for skin
The squeeze begins
II
Meanwhile on the misty forest floor among the undergrowth,
The lawyer-vine
Erupting from disturbances
Weaves its way upwards among the branches and the trunks,
Leaving a ladder of spiny little flagellates
Conveyancing sap
The South American velcro-plant, trails from dark into the light,
Hooking its sticky hairs into small frogs and lizards,
Holding them fast until death by dehydration…
Whilst moving ahead of itself,
The way plants do, by growing, up and over,
Up and over itself,
Incidentally smothering out the light
From competitors
III
Hark, the drumming of a million balled seeds
In the dark palm forest
As bats wake up at four pm
Seeds fall pelting, rolling, tumbling
Setting each other off like billiard-balls
Down down the incline towards the falls
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