Theodore Roethke Poem: Illuminations with FWS Biologist Roxanne Bogart as Moderator

Roxanne Bogart

Every chapter in Dr. Kimmerer's book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, gives us greater insight into and appreciation for the lives of mosses -- their role in ecological succession, and as miniature forests that set the stage for and support entire communities of life. Her stories make you think more than twice about stepping on or pulling up these amazing microcosms that have mastered dessication and immortality.



Theodore Roethke

 I want to share a poem:

Moss-Gathering by Theodore Roethke

To loosen with all ten fingers held wide and limber
And lift up a patch, dark-green, the kind for lining cemetery baskets,
Thick and cushiony, like an old-fashioned doormat,
The crumbling small hollow sticks on the underside mixed with roots,
And wintergreen berries and leaves still stuck to the top, --
That was moss-gathering.
But something always went out of me when I dug loose those carpets
Of green, or plunged to my elbows in the spongy yellowish moss of the marshes:
And afterwards I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,
As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;
Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,
By pulling off flesh from the living planet;
As if I had commited, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.

[Editor's Note:  Always hopeful for comments and conversation...what are you thoughts about mosses, the microcosm, metaphors?]