Nature

one day

I saw

a woodpecker

partner up

with a fungus

to feed

her chicks

 

one day

the sun

sent out

a flare so powerful

it fried the air

Reviews

[Eilis]

My kids have always been fascinated by the idea of parasitic relationships. My daughter in particular used to read a book about parasites over and over. So the first vignette you have here reminded me of that a bit. Some of those relationships in nature where a creature does or experiences something seemingly innocuous that ends up being the beginning of the end for them or those in close proximity to them. Nature is so mysterious. I think one of the more fascinating things is how amoral it can feel to us. How it doesn’t have the same concerns as us. Parasitic relationships feel quite terrifying and barbaric through a human lens but in a natural sense these things seem to be part of the larger functioning of this organism that keeps so much life living on.

The second vignette here feels like the macro moment. Well, the larger, more threatening space of nature where one event can cover much more ground. Again there’s the tinge of ambiguity but still this space where there’s life and action and result. It’s up to imagination to interpret the outcome. Which is nature in action in another way. Sometimes I think ambiguity can be one of the scarier things we encounter. But perhaps our interpretations say a lot about our understanding of life itself. I like these little vignette type of poems and how much they ask of the reader.

[SkinlessFrank]

Yes, that amorality is strange, a bit like revulsion. One of my favourite groups of parasites are those wasps that lay their eggs inside a developing larva of a fly, which itself is a parasite on a goldenrod plant. The fly larva causes the plant to build a kind of tumour-like structure on the stem to protect it. But the wasp has evolved to penetrate that structure and deposit its egg inside the fly. As the fly larva grows, so does the parasitic wasp, inside the fly. It emerges from the fly after devouring it from the inside. To me, there's a poetry in all this. There is an unstoppable eventuality of the entire chain of events, like you say, it's just something that is. And then, at a cosmic scale, who is to say that the instant destruction of the poor creatures that inhabit this world is not also foreordained in nature's plan.

[Kenneth The Poet]

I read this a few times and I read over the reviews. It's like I'm watching a slideshow and the stanzas above the final line are the two best pics in an otherwise bad vacation review. Nature is just like a bad vacation sometimes, and there are moments where the images become memorable. I think your poetry encapsulates that notion quite well.

[SkinlessFrank]

Thanks Lynn.....I like the way you have interpreted this....And I know exactly what you're getting at.

[...]

What if the mind is a projector and the eye is the screen and life is an unconscious dream of consciousness. What if we already knew why we are here, but part of being here is forgetting why we came and our "life" is simply about learning/experiencing/growing into that reason for being...anything :)
Ya, I know, but I like the trip of thinking outside the box haha and who knows, maybe "God" lives vicariously recreating its self, forever, through us. Consciousness having an experience...infinite possibilities, all of us

[Ed Hart]

if we had been a little better organized as a species, we might have seen it coming for a thousand years and thought ahead a little bit...we can't even get it together to stop intoxifying the surface of the globe with filled diapers and those convenient plastic bags from the market...now look, you've gone and got me started

[SkinlessFrank]

yep in another universe we could might have been mingling with angels in the cosmos

[. serah .]

-- hmmm... am reading this powerful piece through the prism of my own perceptions... and what strikes me the most is the randomness of natural occurrences... and when i think of nature... then i always think of how religions cannot explain why entire civilizations were wiped out because of a natural disaster... and i'm also thinking about terrorists... and how some humans succumb to the idea of being destructive and some don't... -- so whether it's nature or human beings, there's an inexplicable randomness all around us... and for suicide bombers and the victims of terror attacks, life just stops... without any real logical/rational explanation...

[SkinlessFrank]

yes, and i am with my dying mother now, playing her Chopin nocturnes as she drifts in and out of consciousness, and thinking about all this randomness, or is it?

[. serah .]

-- i'm sorry to hear that... my mother is a cancer survivor (stage 3, year 2008) and recently, a cyst was detected... we sank that day... then we found out that it's not harmful but we need to monitor it carefully... -- i spend a lot of time with my mother... just read out your poem to her... she's an invisible member of this site... -- we usually share art when we are together... and that means a lot to her... -- at one point, i used to be angry... i felt that she led such a tough life that she doesn't deserve cancer... and then i saw all those people who are also suffering from cancer... and i realized that no one deserves to suffer like that... and i couldn't see any rational explanation behind anyone's pain...

[. serah .]

-- i was wrong about randomness, Maestro D. ... i came across a Kurt Vonnegut quote today... which says...

“- Why me?
- That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
- Yes.
- Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”

-- and i disagree with it vehemently... -- i think now that until we have a scientific explanation for a certain occurrence or a phenomenon, we think it is random... -- actually, it's even possible that nothing is random...

[SkinlessFrank]

i wonder about randomness too sometimes, and then i can sometime end up at the opposite extreme, that every atom in the universe is in someway predestined to a follow a particular trajectory...

[. serah .]

-- wow... that's quite a thought and maybe a bit above my pay grade coz i majored in history... but i think (as an average but perhaps somewhat observant human being) that with the passage of time, we find answers... the cause behind things... -- my mother mentioned some research today which suggests that scientists are working on a medicine which could prevent the recurrence of breast cancer... and we may not have a definitive answer about why she had breast cancer but maybe in the future there'll be some way to know... -- there are people who are working on an imaging technique/algorithm which might be able to map the precise path of cancerous cells... and that could minimise the severity of pain that cancer treatment inflicts... that's where i'm at in my thinking, Maestro D. ...