wedded to its beauty

 

The Ginkgo and Us

the ginkgo, alone of its family, survives,

its past reaches back hundreds of millions of years,

back to when dinosaurs prowled its woods,

cousin after cousin went extinct,

by the Common Era only a few ginkgo survived,

enter humans,

we who judge flora and fauna

and pass sentence on them, 

eliminating some, changing some,

all to fit our needs, our wants,

each individual tree lives long

and can tolerate tough conditions,

the ginkgo has a nut we can enjoy,

yet other trees are better at giving us the nutmeat we want,

the fruit can be overwhelming in smell, 

perhaps attracting dispersers who are no longer in existence,

what do we see in the ginkgo,

so that we trouble ourselves to cultivate it?

I feel an answer in fall

when a beautiful tree erupts as if it is a golden flame

and draws us to it as if bees to flowers,

with a sweetness in its beauty

that bonds the artist in us to it,

what a heartening story of who we can be as humans,

too often we enslave and despoil the world,

while with the ginkgo we wed the best of ourselves

with the casual glory this ancient tree flares.

by Henry H. Walker

June 1, ‘21