All disturbances eventually end. Some types of disturbance
                such as farming may occur continuously on a single site for
                years. Eventually, however, the farm may be abandoned. ... б
                Once a disturbance has ceased, a process of ecological change
                begins. The disturbed area represents a new habitat available
                for plants and animals to colonize. Often, the physical conditions
                of disturbed habitats are severe.

                                A Field Guide to Ecology of Eastern Forests

Red Maple

                Acer rubrum

   Four plates of raw
iron, folded over one
   another, could not, they saw,
         contain the world.
         The world did not mind:

   turning, it looked
as a child would, to itself,
   and found a game in the muck
         a mare's hooves made
         as she stamped and cried.

   When the plates split,
a foal descends, and her pain
   is not everything it
         knows: the leggy
         cluster prancing

   under cirrus
celebrates an awkwardness—
   honor to the universe
         the hole I came from
         sends forth to eat.

   Wobble-legs falls.
Gets up, different. Its red-green
   flower: adder's-tongues, flawed
         trumpets, baby-
         squalls of flower-birds:

   the spring wind shakes
it through ten thousand forms,
   forms falling through themselves like
         a train station
         departure board's

   rain of changes.
Foal grows then, knows harness.
   Being tightens to one thing
         and another—
         and when the train comes,

   its works are done.
Lying lightly on the grey
   mud of the old carriage road,
         or pressed by boot
         soles into the mud,

   confetti, red
paper for a celebration:
   a branch coughs in the wind,
         the flowers give
         up their attachments.