WORKING MANUSCRIPT,
THE NEXT WORLD,
IS IN THE SPRING ISSUE OF
YOU CAN FIND IT
This poem arose from an encounter with a douglas fir in the Willamette National Forest.
The tree was dead. Or so I thought. I approached, put my hand against it. I felt it breathe. Or was it the rest of the forest breathing through it?
It's been discovered (by Suzanne Simard) that trees are connected below ground via a vast fungal network, threads of mycelium that grow from the root tip of the tree and connect to roots of other trees resembling neural networks (you can read more about the research here).
THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF TREES (Drs Camille Defrenne & Suzanne Simard)
So, with that in mind, the question arose: what’s alive and what’s dead out there?
How make that call?
“How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?”
― William Blake
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Here's the beginning of the poem:
What Holds Everything Together
1.
The Douglas-fir’s dead body is not dead. How can it be
dead, half of it still standing, twenty feet into the sky,
trunk five yards in diameter? I place my palm against
the bark, feel the curves of bark beetle galleries beneath,
and the hollow deeper still...
YOU CAN FIND THE REST OF THE POEM
Suzanne Simard's story about her discovery and research was fictionalized in the novel "Overstory" by Richard Powers.
She has written a memoir.
Find out more about it at her website:
https://suzannesimard.com/finding-the-mother-tree-book/
