Ode to a Living Green Carpet

 Trees for Peace

Ode to a Living Green Carpet

Dr Abe V Rotor

Anna Christina, author's daughter poses before a century-old 

acacia tree at Ateneo de Manila University c 2010

This mossy tree is actually a community of epiphytic
liana, fern, moss and lichen with a host tree, an acacia.

Close-up of moss growing on the spongy bark of acacia.

I rest beneath a bough on a sweltering day,

flowing beard and hair hanging like curtain and carpet

cushioning my tired feet and head;

floor, walls and ceiling you make - cool and living.

Breathe with me, catch the passing breeze, filter the dusts 

like your ancestor in the distant past -

the slimy, lowly blue-green that caught the sun and bubbled oxygen,

filling the earth with life, creatures, my kin and I now share.

Life in slumber I now dream of that Paradise lost – and regained

even only for a while.  Let me in your abode, carpet green

and let the world go by, or at the edge of time

stand still in praise to the One unseen. ~