Shukkei-en Ginkgo Speaks: a haibun
When the black rains end, when the bloodless bodies are buried in earth, when the poisons filter down into the dark and fertile soil, when the troops turn to stone, We will still be here.
We who withstood heat forty times stronger than the sun’s, who have existed since before the dinosaurs, who you call living fossils, oldest of trees, last of our kind—We who budded new green fists within the year of your blast, remain.
You who once saved Our kind, who value Our tenacity to grow in your concrete worlds and clean your sooted air, who still lean against Our trunks and dream what you could be, you and We are linked in our survival. We will not forsake you.
We draw power from deeper than you bury your war heroes, deeper than your shrapnel will ever lodge. We stand, undeterred by Our many wounds, phoenixed from the ashes of your fears, phloem finding routes to rise around charred trunks and blasted limbs.
Listen: venerate these seared trunks, see how Our golden leaves fall within a day to create a mirror halo at Our feet, where all power resides, where all life waits for you to surrender to Our embrace.
when the black rains end,
beneath burns, spring’s green fists hold
fall’s golden halo.
Note: The Shukkei-en Ginkgo tree, planted in 1740, stood less than a mile from ground zero of the Hiroshima bomb. He and six other ginkgos in the area survived, and grow to this day in the Shukkei-en Gardens. The last surviving species in their family, ginkgos were nearly extinct when humans began planting them about 1,000 years ago—one of the first examples of conservation through cultivation.
MARYBETH HOLLEMAN is author of the poetry collection tender gravity, the memoir The Heart of the Sound, co-author of Among Wolves, and co-editor of Crosscurrents North, among others. Read more.