Ecotone

Ecotone I did not plant the prairie tickseed that appeared among The cultivated flowers of my garden and quickly dominated. It seemed to say, “We live, still! My house sits in a tension zone, an ecological “no man’s land” where Tall Grass Prairie and the Cross Timbers, vie for control. Here the vagaries of weather assure that all who enter are mistreated. Seasons turn through the Zone as Fall, Winter, Spring, And the Heat. The moisture-prickling Heat, like a visit from The in-laws, comes early, stays long and wearies the endurance. Rainfall is the fickle arbiter of the Zone. It befriends the trees Almost; the grass too much. Legions of plants, playthings Of climate, contending over millennia for land suitable to neither. They were not untended. Cultivation by wild fires, twisting winds, floods And drought, performed acts of purification and renewal; encroachers purged, Minerals recycled, seeds scattered, and the arena reset for the endless contest. But gone now are blades of Blue Stem and pickets of Post Oak. Red subsoil overlaid with Bermuda sod is my “Sooner” system; An inanity to the Zone kept on life support by irrigation and fertilizer. Bermuda minders are hungry yet grow heavy with time And plenty. They seek order amid uncertainty, and Shelter from risk, yet cast their lot in a tension zone. Their dis-ease stems from attempted breakouts of the Cultivators Struggling to wrest free of human controls. (They who are said to have Ears to hear a wildfire in its death throes claim it hisses, “We live, still!”) They are not alone. Homes of the coastal naïf become Mere tender for Chaparral fires as those of a floodplain Are flotsam for the river. Like mallards returning to the same pond After each thinning by hunters, the unwitting Rebuild as the Cultivators whisper, ”We live still” Copyright Paul Thomson 2017