Member Poem

(The Oldest Living Organism Known to Humankind)

Before the pyramids had seen
the light of day, my wood
began to slowly grow from bone-dry
earth. It’s understood

I’m older than the oldest redwood,
baobab, or fir.
Sol’s photons, whizzing through the chill
of space-time, minister

to all my chlorophyll. I may
as well be on the Moon,
for none but boffins know just where
I stand, or I would soon

be harmed by heedless tourists, over-
joyed to say they’d seen
my gnarly branches. Thriving in
adversity, I’ve been

through climate change, frigidity,
high winds, and wars. I grace
the granite and the dolomite
atop this rocky face

where marmots, bighorn sheep, and horses
roam. My dotage gives
no pine nuts to Clark’s nutcracker —
a crow-like bird which lives

a life of bustle, caching seeds,
existing for a breath —
while I, who’s aged five thousand years,
am nowhere close to death.