Azolla

Something magical is going on, even

If that something isn’t easily explained,

Wrote Janet Maslin in a movie review

More than a third of a century ago,

And it’s true, and not just in Scottish movies,

And if we knew how to explain it better

We wouldn’t keep goosing it with miracles

And flagrant wizardry in attempts to make

The subtle magic actually visible.

We don’t even know what magic means really—

From childhood we use it to refer to rules

Broken, power in our fingers, folderol.

We would perhaps be better off admitting

The ordinary world’s impossibly weird,

And we’re the dislocated ghosts moving through,

Our fairytales and fables clinging to us

Like trailing mists, our sillages, our bedsheets.

Something magical is going on, even

If we don’t perceive it’s in our perceptions,

Our addition to the scene, our confusion.

Nearly half a thousand thousand centuries

Ago, an aquatic fern wrested control

Of the planet’s climate by taking over

The landlocked Arctic Ocean’s surface layer

Of freshwater, which allowed the ferns to grow

Unchecked in a wide-open environment.

Billions of tons of ferns lived and died, then sank

To the ocean floor, taking with them carbon

They had sucked from the air when they were alive.

Atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels

Plummeted by more than three-quarters over

A little less than ten thousand centuries,

Cooling the Arctic enough that the planet

Froze at the poles and lurched into a cycle

Of ice ages that continue to this day

But that may now be ending thanks to our own

Carbon-dioxide exhalations. The poles

Are melting again, even as we watch stars

From the shores the last Ice Age scraped out for us.

Something magical is going on. We know

This when we pause in our feeding and dying

And sinking to the bottom of our floating

World to look around us and wonder what is

This something that isn’t easily explained?