Tracts of Suburbs

Did you know there are dozens of species of fireflies, 

and some of them light up with a blue glow? 

Did you know about the moths? 

Thousands of them, bright pink 

and raspberry orange 

and checkerboard and emerald. 

All called things like Black-Etched Prominent, 

Purple Fairy, 

Pink-Legged Tiger, 

Small Mossy Glyph 

and Black-Bordered Lemon. 

Did you know that there are moths that feed on lichens? 

Did you know about the blue and green bees? 

The rainbow-colored dogbane beetles? 

Your streams are supposed to teem with newts, 

salamanders, crawdads, 

frogs, and fishes. 

I want to take you by the hand 

and show you an animal you've never seen before, 

and say, "This exists! It's real! It's alive!" 

There are secret wildflowers 

that no website will show you 

and that no list entitled 

"native species to attract butterflies!" 

will ever name.

The purple coneflowers and prairie blazing star 

are a tidepool, a puddle, 

With a whole ocean waiting out there. 

Wildflowers that only grow 

in a few specific counties 

in a single state in the United States, 

Plants that are evolved specifically 

to live underneath the drip line of a dolomite cliff 

or on the border of a glade of exposed limestone bedrock. 

Did you know that different species of moss 

grow on the sides of a boulder versus on top of it? 

There are obscure trees you might have never seen,

Sourwood, Yellowwood, 

Overcup Oak, Ninebark, 

Mountain Stewartia, Striped Maple, 

American Hophornbeam, 

Rusty Blackhaw,

Kentucky Coffeetree. 

There are edible fruits you've never even heard of. 

It brings a dooming feeling to know

That so many of these species have been

entirely rooted out.

Vast tracts of suburb 

and town and city and barren pasture

where a person could plausibly never learn

where a person might never imagine

just how many beautiful things there are, 

In our own living, breathing planet.

It's like being a fish that has lived its whole life in a bucket, 

with no way of imagining the ocean. 

The insects in your field guide 

are a fraction of those that exist.

Of all the native plants to your area 

only a handful can be bought in a nursery.