The dancing rooted forty-niners
New Jersey’s a subtle place
but it sings of wonders
akin to big bold places like
Greater Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon
The hawk migration in October
converging over Cape May Point
and winging southward
the shore birds flying north
dropping down on Reed or Moore beach
to gorge themselves
kneedeep in horseshoecrabeggs
No less replete in miracles
are the million acres
south central in the Garden
astride an aquifer
of seventeen
trillion gallons
of pure water
The flora in the Barrens
as fragile as it’s various
has names to suggest
a party to which you hope to be invited
Behold the brilliant and lovely
pink lady slipper
and its roots, oh the roots,
pitch pine and rose pogonia
Sandwort spatterdock and swamp magnolia
turkeybeard and pyxie moss
inkberry and prickly pear
blueberry and black hackleberry
Cranberry beyond the yellow-eyed grass
broom-crowberry and sweet pepperbush
bearberry and kay’s beak-rush
white cedar and fragrant water lily
Teaberry and Maryland meadow beauty
orange milkwort and the sundews
the three can-do sundews
mountain laurel and arethusa
or the dragon mouth orchid
How closely have you viewed
the naked or horned bladderwort?
Golden heather and grass-pink
bog-asphodel and blackjack oak
October blue gentian and false reindeer lichen
leatherleaf and pitcher plant
Let the sounds enrapture
as Robin’s hand and eye
capture the magic
of this anything but barren land
Jess’s works say yes
to our collective spirit
not to lose these pines
and flowers and water
to the squeeze of
the densest people-place on Earth
These images remind us
of all we have at stake
said through poster, card, exhibit
a joined regard for flora
that they may still
have their day
Knowing that every cubic centimeter
has ten godzillion times
more life
than all of planet Jupiter
Spurred by inner processes
Robin has heard these plants
invisible ’til now
the way Barbara felt the maize
Rosalind saw the double-stranded helix
we have new forty-niners
those who will preserve
not tear the shallow valley apart.
McVay was founding executive director of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. He was the 16th president of the Chautauqua Institution. He is fascinated by the songs of Nature, propelled by the six-octave Humpback whale’s song, and the songs of humanity, driven by poetry of the planet throughout history and today.
Editor’s note: In the poem above, Robin Jess is an award-winning botanical illustrator from New Jersey. Barbara refers to Barbara McClintock, who won the 1983 Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine for work on maize cytogenetics. The person saw the double-stranded helix is Rosalind Franklin, who worked with Watson and Crick on the 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA.
