About Coevolution
Charles Darwin, naturalist and author of The Origin of Species, encountered an orchid with an unusual feature — foot-long hollow tubes hanging beneath the blossoms, the tips filled with nectar. Darwin realized that the pollinator for this flower must have an equally long snout, or proboscis, to be able to reach the nectar and fertilize the flower. Darwin was ridiculed for this preposterous idea — imagine the sight of a poor insect attempting to fly while sporting a foot-long proboscis — until just such a moth was discovered. The Hawk Moth flies with its snout coiled in a tight ball, and unfurls this dexterous appendage to delicately probe the orchid’s hanging nectaries. In part, through his encounter with this orchid, he began to formulate the theory that species can form long-term evolutionary relationships leading to extraordinary and mutually beneficial transformations and unique dependencies. All life has slowly and patiently evolved over the eons, exquisitely adapting to a challenging world. How will we continue to successfully evolve in a world we are so rapidly transforming?
Web of Life
Dedicated to Dr. W. D. Billing, originator of the
Holocoenotic Theory of Environmental Complexity
Bind together the blooming air, water dancing
from pole to frozen pole. The sun’s touch
brings light to steamy life. The loamy earth,
the patient plants and all the animals, secret
family wed by blood. The sacred fire lights
the dark and leaves pure ash. Spin each thread,
strong and supple, every strand lit with honey’s glow,
weave the cloth, an endless circle. Here and there,
you and me, all the ones who came before,
ancient kin to every pilgrim who walks the path.
Life, long and loud, sings and whistles, croaks and
howls. In our metal days, machine and man
clash and grind. This once fine cloth, used so hard,
gaping holes torn side to side. Edges fray
like fine down feathers. Our broken fingernails,
black with grease, knuckles grazed with scars,
bind each living fiber, mend the tears, renew the web,
until the deserts hum with life and leaf again.
About Web of Life
Dr. W. D. Billings, a professor of Life Sciences, researched botanical environments and illustrated his holistic theory with an intricate line drawing. He modeled the complex, interdependent relationships that foster life and showed how all parts of the web of life are deeply entwined and work together to create functioning ecosystems. Ecosystems consist of interdependent communities of living plants and creatures with their supportive physical environments. All life on our planet, including humans, is sustained through complex relationships with our ecosystems. We are dependent on the natural world for our survival, and our personal actions and inactions affect our planet’s health, and then in turn, our own. This poem’s illustration includes part of Dr. Billings’s circular scientific illustration, and several key forces making all life possible — the sun, pollen, water, and the atmosphere.
Double Vision
I.
Raising crystal eyes to a vestal sky, endless web
of silver lake blue, untouched by time, but rent by rock
stone arches surge to broken crests, etched and scarred.
Wandering tangled streets, chilled water from ancient aqueducts
sits like a polished river rock in my belly. Rome, past and present,
picked over bones of an endless feast. Entering the sunken
stone orb, home to all the gods, the sweeping span leads eyes up
to a shaft of light piercing a pounding oculus. The sun coils
at my still feet, slowly burning an elipse into the stone floor.
II.
Twenty years pass, my feet flat on my own land, the full moon
rises to a blazing zenith, hovers at the center of the sky
dressed in sheer clouds, circled by a halo, ice and crystal light.
The nine circles of heaven spin, etched against a raven sky
my tender hand, shadow on this sterling disk, feels every echo
beat against the stone, bearing swelling life, full and aching.
Each open eye, each yielding nerve, reaches, straining
to see, to hear, the land lying beyond this thin veil
all around the breath of an unheard, whispering world.
About Double Vision
This poem juxtaposes two experiences separated by twenty years and six thousand miles. The first was visiting the Pantheon, one of the best preserved ancient Roman temples. The interior of this remarkable concrete building is an almost perfect sphere one hundred and forty-three-feet-high and wide. The curving walls lead up to an oculus, or twenty-seven-foot-wide circular opening, at the top of the dome. Oculus means “eye” in Latin, and this opening acts almost like an eye’s pupil, creating an opening to the sky and bringing dramatic shafts of light into the interior. The second experience was seeing a full moon ringed by a glowing ice halo. These halos form when cirrus clouds spread thin layers of ice crystals high up in the atmosphere where they reflect the moonlight. Enthralling visions like moon-bows and ice halos often hover above us, but they are less frequently seen in a world dazzled by millions of moving screens. The drawing is an interior view of the Pantheon, light streaming through its oculus.
Sign Language
Every word made clear by her darting
hands, wiry fingers fan out, palms turn up
pausing for a beat, then with a little flutter,
as if to say, “Really, what can you expect?”
Curling, rolling, tracing splines, pulling meaning
from lucid air. Her fingers arch, slowly curve back
like the liquid neck of a startled heron. Both hands
fly up, reaching higher. Suddenly silent, they drop
heavily to her thighs and quietly curl together,
two sleeping doves, still in the dusty, dim cote.
She leans forward listening, one hand leaps up
stabbing the air, her fingers taut, raptor stiff,
the sign language of bone and blood,