Lichen Love

Attached to rock and stone
trees and wood around the world
Lichens live on air and water
messengers of health
models of mutual living 

Their sundry multitudes
reward observation
perfect partnerships
of fungi and algae
and sometimes cyanobacteria
       lovely lichen
nature’s wonderfully weird mandalas 

        l o o k   l o n g

and be transported
into the mystery
myriad textures   colours   patterns
fascinating forms
          beauty
food, dyes, medicines
bird bedding in nests
splendid
       s e n s i t i v e
s  l  o  w     g r o w i n g 

Let’s name a few to love
Lobaria pulmonaria
rarefied being
marker of clean air
Lungwort once was
common everywhere
helping people breathe
Usnea, that Old Man’s green
or yellow Beard, too
has medicinal digestive
anti-all-kinds of powers
Provincial lichen at risk
Pectenia Plumbea
Blue Felt lives close to water
thrives on humidity
at least thirty years
before it reproduces on maples
birch, ash, poplar, eastern cedar
that are older still

Tube Lichen or Monkshood
so common you may not have noticed
Hypogymnia physodes
is one of the few who
sucks sulfurous pollution
into its cells and so becomes
a means of measures 

What, do you suppose,
Lichens are telling people?
love us! love us!
imagine!
humans humble enough
to listen and learn
to love and honour
the foliose, crustose
fruticose, and squamulose 

Oh lichens a-many
be your thallus silvery
green, brown, black, yellow, orange
or dotted with red caps
you are beautiful and strange
familiar and wondrous
astonishing organisms
that never harm their hosts

*

mucilaginous: viscous or gelatinous, that is soothing

thallus: plant body (without stem, leaves, roots, or vascular system)

foliose: having a lobed, leaf-like shape

crustose: forming or resembling a crust

fruticose: having upright or pendulous branches

squamulose: small scale