Somebody had to speak up,

All those twigs and lichen

Brazen in their silences,

Smirking at the passage of time

Refusing to take sides,

To say anything at all.

One day the gases of eternity

Decided they’d had enough

So compressed their mood

And blew up.

Then, in the debris of chaos

A lone branch of the heath family

Took it into its sap

To say something,

Opened wide its bark

And spoke

Presuming to speak for everybody.

Thus was history born.

 

 

Poem by Richard Druitt