A Forest Unfolding
I. No voices and no shade
1. Native Trees by Eric Moe
Text by W.S. Merwin
2. From The Book of Job by David Kirkland Garner
Text from the Book of Job, translated by Stephen Mitchell
Who is this whose ignorant words
smear my design with darkness?
Stand up now like a man;
I will question you: please, instruct me.
Where were you when I planned the earth?
Tell me, if you are so wise.
Do you know who took its dimensions,
measuring its length with a cord?
What were its pillars built on?
Who laid down its cornerstone,
while the morning stars burst out singing
and the angels shouted for joy!
Have you ever commanded morning
or guided dawn to its place—
to hold the corners of the sky
and shake off the last few stars?
All things are touched with color;
the whole world is changed.
​
Have you seen where the snow is stored
or visited the storehouse of hail,
which I keep for the day of terror,
the final hours of the world?
Where is the west wind released
and the east wind sent down to earth?
Who cuts a path for the thunderstorm
and carves a road for the rain—
to water the desolate wasteland,
the land where no man lives;
to make the wilderness blossom
and cover the desert with grass?
II. They have stood round my sleep
3. Eternal Rhythm by Stephen Jaffe
4. Woodswoman Etude by David Kirkland Garner
Text by Anne LaBastille
5. Trees by Stephen Jaffe
Text by W.S. Merwin
III. A dreamer, dreaming
6. From Thoreau’s Notebooks by David Kirkland Garner
Text by Henry David Thoreau
7. In a Country Once Forested by Melinda Wagner
Text by Wendell Berry
IV. Everything in the forest
8. Variation-Deciso Stephen Jaffe
9. Eternal Song by David Kirkland Garner
Text by Richard Powers
From The Overstory by Richard Powers
Networked together underground by
countless thousand miles of living threads,
her trees feed and heal each other, keep
their young and sick alive, pool their
resources and metabolites. . . .
Her trees are far more social than anyone
suspects. There are no individuals. There
aren’t even separate species. Everything in
the forest is the forest. Trees fight no more
than do the leaves on a single tree.
Nature isn’t red in tooth and claw. If trees
share their storehouses, then every drop of
red must float on a sea of green.
​
(Copyright © 2018 by Richard Powers. Used by permission of the author.)​