A Commonplace Book

FROM A COMMONPLACE BOOK: Tracks "Half a billion years ago a creature slithered across the sea floor for the first time. It may have launched an evolutionary arms race." -Rob Moor I. Shot Hole Borers Look close, here, here and here they entered the pulpy underworld beneath bark, through bore-holes round as shot, round and spaced as any planned invasion. And then they tunnel- but aimlessly-perhaps in search of something we can't know-their loops and straight lines, their crooked trails and cul de sacs-they might be deer paths, native trails, or timbered-out pioneer roads through Kentucky's of new land. They show us...what? they gave up and died, or doubled back following their own scent of frass, or the familiar groove they cut through pulpwood: what? A day, a week, a month ago? I found quartered log after split log full of them. Bark on I would have missed them; stripped they are pure Pollocks.