Such an Effortful Green
By Kate Fennimore
one thing can sustain
another
so Z. & I spend the day
looking for lichen
hanging from the trees
I cling to him like the burrs
on our socks
we decide to be a little
less carefully & head
deeper into the forest
I reach my hand up
to brush some witch’s hair
as we pass & a bird call
plays the air
I love lichen because
of the relationship
you say
the symbiosis
a pattern of two organisms
that repeats
until it becomes a whole
if we repeat we could
become a whole
Z. and I
ZandI
ZI
such an effortful green
the fungus looks like
it was caught in the act
of living
of leaning into the wind
stirring its feathers
Image courtesy of Kate Fennimore.
Kate Fennimore is currently in the MFA program at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her poems have appeared in Eunoia Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, an emerging poet’s anthology, and elsewhere. She grew up in the Willamette Valley in Oregon and often writes about that natural landscape.