You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World

by Ada Limon

You have more rights than the undocumented: I need a permit to uproot you.

Drought is an old war.

They planned our thirst for centuries.

Kaumaha claws inside us for the dead forced to bury themselves,

Watch our medics practice consent.

My grandfather smoked Winstons and what could be more American than choosing one’s future decline.

Listening this morning to a clip of what someone or something might hear one day, I can’t help but wonder if they’ll even know what it is. Maybe they’ll think it was the language we spoke to one another to say what we longed for, the language we used to say one day when I’m gone, and you’re out among the trees, please, please remember me.

I’d be lost without that part of you that eases up enough to let me in. Then closes back around me.

And these days our ecosystem is basically a Yiddish resistance song: “Mir Veln Zey Iberlebn”— we will outlive them,

The ranger is still talking about lichen: they colonize harsh environments, infiltrate and wedge apart pieces of rock, serve as food in times of stress for mammals, including humans; birds use lichen for nest-building. Lichen are possibly the oldest living things on earth. We will outlive them. Mir veln zey iberlebn—the Jews who made up that resistance song on the spot were Polish, murdered by the SS

In the story about the Jews of Lublin, no one sang until one person began.