poems with legs
Various poems of mine that have already been published in a marvelous
obscure journal or won a wonderful little prize can be read right here.
I love light. I wrote about complementarity, which refers to two theories of light, as particles and as waves. Properties of physical entities exist in pairs, although particle and wave cannot be observed at the same time. Sometimes light behaves like a particle, sometimes like a wave. Wave-particle duality also applies to you. The behavior of particles and waves is awesome because their interactions cannot be distinguished from what is used to measure them.
complementarity emerges
so I thought I was like that piece of grit
that fool’s gold in a bit of light
in a creek where fish now no fish
could swim across the road by headlight
anyway a stone or secret geode
so hard to crack and sparkling at starlight
since edges even around a fleck
mean I’m here I’m here it’s daylight
outlined in pink a pebble in my shoe
makes me step flinch step to a strobelight
of pain and wee specks of glass
sharp and transparent in sunlight
while diamonds are forever windows melt
dripping glass like wax in candlelight
or asphalt rainbows on oil puddles
where he’s caught by flashlight
and pinned down til his spirit leaks
his name out in neon light
orange and red and water colours
a flash of Turner painting at twilight
and seaside swells of jellyfish
in bioluminescent light
glowing algae on a Fiji beach
drifts of iridescent light
radiating waves of plankton and me
surging with luciferin in moonlight
in "Duality" journal, 2023
Fiona Tinwei Lam, the Poet Laureate of Vancouver, created a wide-reaching City Poem contest in 2022 to promote poetry about Vancouver. My poem “Stanley Park Fir” was shortlisted. The City of Vancouver made Stanley Park into a public park in 1888. Before that, Coast Salish people were living in it for more than 3000 years. And before that, and beyond that, the trees were relating to each other and their environment. The tallest tree in Vancouver is in Stanley Park; it’s a Douglas Fir that is 63.6 metres, as tall as a 16-storey building.
Stanley Park Fir
Aiming up, so far
above you, we are
in the sky, loving
light, we align leaves
precisely for sun,
aspire to be one
evergrowing swirl
galaxy of green,
arms up spiraling,
cumulus tickling,
ant-flavoured needles,
secret undersides:
narrow stripes of white,
our reserve of light
in the rain forest.
We are your mothers.
Eagles understand
how to be a friend
of wind, we’re dancing,
risking death - a storm?
we ride it. Each mouse
gets a shaggy cone,
each squirrel its seeds.
We are your mothers.
Raccoons and humans –
could they be conscious?
Not only rootless,
unaware of roots
right below their feet.
We are your mothers.
Close to our lovers,
those cedars you carve,
amid splashy ferns
horsetail cavorts here
in season, we trees
have had centuries.
We accumulate
the honour of age
from thin supple skin
to thick reptilian.
Groins itching with voles,
sap-sucking aphids,
carbuncles, bruises,
when the crown teases
lightning we drop limbs,
live in cambium.
A scarf of soft moss
for cold, resinous
icicles glisten
on clingy lichen.
We are your mothers.
Distant skyscrapers
transparent cells, tall
rigid forms will fall,
put a plant on top.
So you want to walk
inside on wood; talk
about afterlife.
We are your mothers.
Research into the amazing connections and community among trees in BC, especially the Douglas Fir, was published by Dr. Suzanne Simard at the University of British Columbia. In 2015 she started the Mother Tree project. I love the trees in Stanley Park in Vancouver and I wrote my poem “Stanley Park Fir”. In 2021 she published her New York Times bestseller “Finding the Mother Tree”. Her idea is that trees are literally networking with each other below the ground. They are in a network of mycorrhizal fungus, of tiny threads all over the forest floor. It’s an exchange - trees give sugars to the fungus, and the fungus gives nutrients in the soil to the trees. Through the network, trees are giving chemical signals to each other. And these are the same kind of signals as human neurotransmitters! Douglas Fir trees have kin recognition: that means they send more carbon and nutrients to help other Douglas Fir trees than to other types of trees. In other words, the Mother Tree is feeding her seedlings. Those small trees grow much better if they are linked in to the network, and the Mother Tree is still there. You could say that this tree is aware of itself, of its growth, and its interconnectedness with others.