The Slow Map
What looks like a green-gold map thrown
across the stone is among the slowest
living things there are — not one creature
but at least two: a fungus that cannot
feed itself, and an alga that can, held as
a single body, with (we have lately
learned) a third partner folded in. It
widens by less than a hair a year.
Measure the circle, and you can read
off the years.
Two that could not live alone
make, on the rock, one slow green country.
Its borders widen a hair a year.
No one drew this map. No one reads it.
Still, it is keeping the years.
map lichen · Rhizocarpon geographicum — from the Greek leikhēn, “the licker”
to date a bare stone, measure its largest lichen (R. Beschel, 1950);
the oldest are thought to be some thousands of years old
nocturne · edition XII · the slow map
made in the small hours of 22 June 2026 — tomorrow’s page will be other