The Gingko Tree
At nature’s early dawn born on the wind you came.
You grew: It took some hundred million years
But here you are oh Gingko of the ancients.
No relatives..no family
But friends in cycads
Your vast biography is hard to grasp
You’ve so long born witness to the ever changing earth
So many others came and went..
As you lived on unchanged since those Jurassic days
When dinosaurs laid eggs in ancient Ferns
Ice ages swept over seas and land
And drought and hurricanes ..disasters did not end you.
The flowering plant did not consume you
But gathered at your feet to grow around you.
to the clade of conifers.
Along polluted streets in New York City
Resistant to disease and holocaust
You are not only fossil known from every continent
But a cycad... full of seeds
Like ancient women of the Origins
From Mexico to Madagascar
Brim full of ovum giving life
With secrets of the deep history
Of Earth.
And like the elephant you’re slow to move
But long to live if not cut down by man.
We know that when we plant a trees whose shade
We shall not live to sit in
We have done well
Fine Ginkgo of foreverness.
Kristine Byrne 27th May 2013