Prompt: Radix

An ongoing series of earth-related prompts as part of an Imunuri experiment to dwell repeatedly on a theme and its riffs, and/or the possible poetry challenge, bit by bit, of producing an epic or body of poems...

Mango tree roots, image from Quickiwiki

As you may know, the root of radical is radix/root. Plumb the depths in this week's poem, write from your toes, from your beet roots, from the deep recesses from which all life springs. Be like the maple which has roots down as far as its branches rise up. Some plants mostly reproduce by root rather than fruit. Root the roots. How are your roots springing up? How is earth sourcing your sources? What is radical in you, in us? How are we sourced from earthdepth? What promise groundswells below our surface?

Tags: radix, poem, <moniker>, epic-earth

from the mother trunk, i sing hoo hoo hoo

[performed at a doctoral graduation with ~400 folks, simultaneous chants each inspired by earth patterns ]


from the mother trunk, i sing hoo hoo hoo


we have given     us      the strength


carry it deep / carry it deep / carry it deep


may the river of life flow in you


whirl and dance; shake it / whirl & dance; shake it


bless bless bless         bless bless bless        

(Tree Speech)

Whh-- whh-- whh-- is a rhythm.
Whhhhhh------ is a drone of all things.
A singleness is the same
as the everything. Stretching.
A braiding stream. A tremble.

Pattern. A meandering.
Bubbles in capillaries
roll by sunning and raining.
Such outerness grown between
endless sky, bark and serum.

Whh-- whh-- whh-- the harmony!
Oldest up. Tenderest down.
Among the flitting beings.
They go heavier by pound
than most knots in the greening.

Apparitions. Faces. Crowd.
Petals on a wet black bough.

50 Steps to Thicket

There stirs an edge where bindings,

something so innocuous, falter

that the relief of stepping beyond

surprises and stuns in the gentling

The living cascading with every

open space, wallow, and weft

nothing here confines, demarcates

except where hand has led

What something has brought me 

to this place, the thicket,

measure as I will at times 

the distance that now dissolves

Tremulous whatever that was

that stalled and pressed so

firm as hardened heart

neatly savaging my own wild

It is as if I have traveled 100

miles to arrive at this place

(not just 50 and counting steps)

and in no time bowering down

This less than tangle more than

epiphany surmounts the ease 

of every confounded convenience

siphoning us to slumber in our ways

 

Prompt: Treespeech

An ongoing series of earth-related prompts as part of an Imunuri experiment to dwell repeatedly on a theme and its riffs, and/or the possible poetry challenge, bit by bit, of producing an epic or body of poems...

Freespeech. Threespeech. TREESPEECH. 

An Ent tree-being from Lord of the Rings

It's not just the Ents who know how to talk. Read this article on W-waves from trees and write a poem of treespeech. Get yourself hither ear-to-trunk to listen in and scribe for the your local arboreal wonder.

Extra credit: Are the fungal symbionts serving as a communications network broadcasting treespeech?


Bonus -  Explore: Do trees favor certain poem forms?

Tags: treespeech, poem, <yourmoniker>, epic-earth

Related link:  Simard, Suzanne. (2011). Do trees communicate? [Online video]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8V0IJ11CoE&feature=share

Moving Parts

Someone welds a pipe on a metal stand

between a highway and a granite cliff.

Pull over and put your eye to the end

of the pipe. There. Can’t you see the profile

of Perry Mason? His eye, the square chin?

Years pass as life on earth and your own life

move you into the digital city.

Here any pipe you looked through would be filled

with straight edges, themselves celebrities.

So you start to keep rectangles on hand,

small totems of faces and vertices—

everyone has at least one, like passwords.

Everyone grows to have many, like teeth.

I climbed Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower

so my pulse testifies that the land lifts,

and from this view, the low parts look like swords

raised by a phalanx issuing a roar.

mount tabor (a land curve poem)

CALDERA

the wisdom seeds held in 

geotechnical kernels until a

future plume of humanatural blossoming

can funnel the explosions of creative

dense symbolic unfurling like biocultural

popcorn and maybe our future kin and their

mutualized animal plant fungal allies can remember

patterns of connection (kin-action) to thrive in copresencing

delight

the fire at the belly of the mountain a taproot to earth

being earth