A poem about the Trembling Giant, the estimated 80,000 year old quaking aspen clonal colony known as Pando, Latin for “I spread”.
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When the land was wet when I was a single seedling, and not yet dry as it as now, I spread,
When I had become a forest of one, the flames keeping the conifers away, I spread,
When the first humans to reach my lands gazed upon me, when countless seasons had already passed, I spread,
When those who I once knew, friend and foe, became lost to even the cultural memory of the humans, still, I spread,
When the world changed to something completely unrecognizable to anything seen before, I spread,
I am