Abundance

Choke cherry (Prunus virginiana) fruit ripens and is consumed just as quickly by the multitude of bird species living in and around the neighborhood. These tart little berries contain their next generation ensconced in the fleshy nutriment; each berry, another potential tree, and each winged eater, a cultivator as well. We, too, can eat these astringent and puckery berries, but must beware of the seed, whose hydrocyanic acid is poisonous to our systems. The very tree pictured here has recovered from an infestation of the tent catepillar in late spring. Every leaf consumed and only flower clusters hanging, waiting to be pollinated. The energy stored in this individual's roots propelled a new generation of leaves in early summer and the catepillars have moved on, now metamorphosed into the flickering moths around my evening porchlight, leaving these leaves in peace. The moths are also eaten by the winged visitors to this little enclave in Maynard. I've watched the process through months, from tree bud to infestation to bloom to fruit and I know why the thick song of birds can be heard every morning at daybreak; there is joy in abundance, celebration to be had from full bellies. This is not an Earth of brutal competition, it is one of slow and measured collectivity and change, exchange of energies and provisions for life. More than enough for everyone, each creature a negotiated place, chains of relationships, but no obvious beginning or end, no strict hierarchy.

Sustenance for life is the rule of nature. Something else, it seems, rules our natures today. A psychology of domination. It expresses itself most fully in our major institutions, where brute force and unabashed exercise of raw power dig us into artifice unprecedented in the history of human habitation. We think we create comfort and habitat for oursleves, but these are merely fleeting expressions, without long term prospects. We are all miners now, excavating with frenzy, imposing measures and restrictions, undermining abundance, forcing human suffering so that a small elite may further the illusion - at least for themselves. The tart berries of modernization also contain poisonous seeds that may kill us, and have certainly changed the stakes for life everywhere. We do not follow the rules, which are simply laid out and easy for us to see, but instead trudge foolishly into degraded futures, unable or unwilling to head the signs.