40-acre growth found in Michigan.
 ? The Los Angeles Times


The sky is full of ruddy ducks 
and widgeon's, mockingbirds, 
bees, bats, swallowtails, 
dragonflies, and great horned owls. 

The land below teems with elands 
and kit foxes, badgers, aardvarks, 
juniper, banana slugs, larch, 
cactus, heather, humankind. 

Under them, a dome of dirt. 
Under that, the World's 
Largest Living Thing spreads
like a hemorrhage poised 

to paralyze the earth?like a tumor 
ready to cause 9.0 convulsions, 
or a brain dreaming this world 
of crickets and dung beetles, 

sculpins, Beethoven, coots,
Caligula, St. Augustine grass, Mister 
Lincoln roses, passion fruit, wildebeests, 
orioles like sunspots shooting high, 

then dropping back to the green 
arms of trees, their roots 
sunk deep in the power 
of things sleeping and unknown.