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One By One

Posted in Imagery, Photography, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 23, 2023| 10 Comments »

[with 3 poems from litmosphere
Journal of CHARLOTTE LIT]
 . 
Birds Speak to the Women in My Family
 . 
This time,
+++++ when a trail of feathers
+++++ +++++ leads me into the forest,
+++++ +++++ +++++ I follow.
 . 
Don’t think about where it’s taking me,
only the flightless thing, torn to tufts,
crawling in the underbrush,
but I find no blood, no body.
 . 
Whisper of deep woods
Of gifts and pleasures planted and earthed. What was I
so afraid it would say?
 . 
I’m here,
+++++ arm full of feathers, unsure
+++++ +++++ which of us is the offering,
+++++ +++++ +++++ which way is home.
 . 
My grandmother was told
by an out-of-season swallow
when her mother died.
 . 
We have family in town,
my mother says, pointing to a pair of sandhill cranes
stilt walking through the yard.
 . 
I’ve collected
+++++ so many feathers.
+++++ +++++ I could be mistaken
+++++ +++++ +++++ for wings.
 . 
My mother’s tongue,
her mother’s birdsong
softer with every daughter,
but still a trace, feather by feather
through the old mountains,
disappearing into stone.
 . 
Arielle Hebert
litmosphere, Journal of Charlotte Lit, Charlotte Center for the Literary Arts, © 2023
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Chilly for June, but after all sunrise isn’t for another half hour. It’s 5:25 AM and Sharon and I are standing in the Surry County foothills a few miles south of the Virginia line. At 5:30 we’ll begin to count. Last year at this very spot a Chuck-Will’s-Widow fired up and sang for 45 seconds before I’d even started the timer. I counted him anyway.
 . 
This year the first voice is a Wood Thrush. Oh, thank you, Audubon’s flute . . . in the summer woods, silver notes pour by the afternoon river. Of all the forest’s music my favorite. Now Catbird, Cardinal, Chipping Sparrow, Indigo Bunting; I call their names when I hear them sing – still too dark to see. Sharon inscribes their presence on our tally sheet. One by one, they fly from mysterious spirit into settled data points.
 . 
I didn’t really believe Sharon at first. Back in March she asked me to describe these USGS Breeding Bird Surveys and then said, “Can I come?” Really? Pick you up at 5 AM to drive to our first stop? Then 49 more stops, spaced half a mile apart? Set the timer for 3 minutes, count every bird heard or seen, then back in the car and on to the next? Finish late morning somewhere northeast of Pilot Mountain with Hanging Rock looming? You really want to do that?  “Yes! Really! And I’ll bring a picnic!”
 . 
Now we’re at Stop 28. Some of the landmark descriptions, established decades ago when these survey routes were first established, are obscure and changeable: overhead power lines and opening in trees. Well, yes, there is a nice opening in the mixed forest, and yes, there’s an Indigo Bunting as expected. Now we hear a Scarlet Tanager, first one of the morning, but these devious birds love to glean insects at the very apex of the canopy and you could crick your neck trying to spot one. Nevertheless there it appears, flitting to the outer branches of a tall loblolly. Brilliant crimson, stark black wings, pausing to snatch a moth then raise beak in its raucous warble. Sharon gasps. “I’ve glimpsed a Tanager before, but I’ve never seen one in the open. Oh my! This is worth the trip!”
 . 
And we still have 22 more stops. Not to mention the promise of a picnic at Hanging Rock.
 . 
❦
 . 
Enter the litmosphere, a universe of writers and readers. The readers may be physically situated anywhere in the world, same for the writers although they must at some time have lived in North Carolina or one if its four bordering states. Today’s poems appear in the second annual edition of litmosphere as winners, finalists, or semi-finalists in this year’s Lit/South Awards.
 . 
Charlotte Lit, the Lit/South Awards, and the publication of litmosphere are the brainchildren of Kathie Collins (East Bend, NC) and Paul Reali (Charlotte, NC). In establishing the Charlotte Center for Literary Arts, they are creating a community of writers with a unique definition of Southern, and the poetry, essays, and fiction in this year’s journal speak from a creative realm without boundaries. Place and persona are powerfully freed from constraint. I really could not anticipate where the turn of each page would take me. Ever been welcomed into a gathering that challenges you, surprises you, fills empty spots you didn’t even know you had? And leaves you feeling welcomed and ready for more?
 . 
Charlotte Lit, besides its annual contest, offers more than a hundred classes and events every year. Membership information is available here:
 .
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Of Rock Doves
 . 
We call these doves pigeons
because they are many
because we once built them cotes
because we collected their guano
because we spread it on melon
patches and near tomato beds
because they bob their heads
in their staggering walk
like professional wrestlers
at the end of their careers
because they can’t see
straight ahead any other way
because they are easily misled
because no matter what
some find their way back home
because when some vanish
there are always many more
because their name is an echo
of the hungry noises
that come from their flimsy nests
because they raid each other’s nests
they kill their neighbors’ young
because they kill their own young
because together in a group
they are called a deuil
which means mourning in French
because we eat their young
because they taste so sweet
and have very small bones
 . 
Paul Jones
litmosphere, Journal of Charlotte Lit, Charlotte Center for the Literary Arts, © 2023
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
When the Universe Told Me You Were Dead
 . 
That very morning, the feral cat left
a dead bluebird on my doorstep,
splayed open.
 . 
Heart gutted, this remained:
a blood-empty chamber
caged behind delicate, shattered bone.
 . 
Newly lifeless, feathers still wet
with morning sky, the orbs of her
eyes set to flight.
 . 
Anita Cantillo
litmosphere, Journal of Charlotte Lit, Charlotte Center for the Literary Arts, © 2023
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Audubon in the summer woods
by the afternoon river sips
his flute, his fingers swimming on
the silver as silver notes pour
. . .
from Audubon’s Flute by Robert Morgan
[read the entire poem here]
 .
❦
 . 
NOTE: June 19-24, 2023 is NATURALIST WEEK sponsored by Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont. Wherever you are in the world, you can participate in the Naturalist Challenge by spending time outdoors as a naturalist: Pay Attention; Ask Questions; Make Connections; Share. You can also receive a prize if you earn 25 points for your activities! See details here:
 .  . 
❦
 . 
The Breeding Bird Survey is a long-term, large-scale, international avian monitoring program initiated in 1966 to track trends of North American bird populations. There are currently over 4100 courses in the US and Canada, run each spring by volunteer surveyors, and in recent years Mexico has also been added. More than 450 scientific publications have relied heavily, if not entirely, on BBS data; essentially every avian conservation study in North America turns to the BBS in some way.
 . 
In the 1960’s, Chandler Robbins and colleagues at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center were developing survey techniques to monitor populations of hunted birds: Woodcock, Snipe, Mourning Dove. Inspired by Rachel Carson and her publication of Silent Spring in 1962, Robbins realized that larger surveys were needed to document the effects of DDT, as well as other human and non-human variables affecting bird populations. He invented the roadside survey used today: 50 stops plotted on a 24.5 mile course to be counted once a year. The goal is broad longitudinal observation rather than stop-by-stop variation, and the technique for counting in 2023 is the same as in 1966: a single observer, no “pishing” or other enticements to the birds, no apps or electronics, just two ears and field glasses.
 . 
I ran my first course in 1995: Copeland, southern Surry County. I’ve counted the course every spring except when BBS shut down for COVID in 2020 (because many courses run through parks and federal lands that were closed to visitors that year). In 2022 I added a second course when it became vacant, Mount Airy in northern Surry County. If you’re interested next year, I’ll pick you up at 5 AM. But Sharon has first dibs.
 . 
Bill
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Heterotroph

Posted in Ecopoetry, Imagery, Photography, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 9, 2023| 9 Comments »

[with 3 selections from Tar River Poetry]
. 
Letter to the Archaeologists of the Post-Anthropocene
. 
You know already what fools we were,
how like the dog that starts itself awake
. 
we jumped and bared our teeth
and turned to chase our tail, our fury
. 
rising as we spun – and how, unlike the dog,
we did not hold our caught selves
. 
gently, surprised to be at once the captive
and the captor, but chewed our own flesh
. 
bloody, sure we were destroying that
which would destroy us. You already know
. 
we killed our saviors, set fire
to our home, and ate
. 
our bitter hearts. We said
because we owned what we destroyed
. 
it was ours for the destruction,
and we destroyed it
. 
to prove that it was ours.
You know all that.
. 
You may not know, however,
just how much
. 
we loved what we destroyed, how much
we longed to have it love us –
. 
how even the cruelest among us
would stop sometimes to watch
. 
the polluted sky at sunset
turning gold then pink then indigo.
. 
Shane Sheely
from Tar River Poetry, Volume 62, Number 2. Spring 2023. © 2023 TRP
. 
❦ ❦ ❦
. 
Some ten years ago I became a phyto-heterotroph. Many people have asked whether it was a difficult transition and whether I have regrets. Not at all! To borrow a phrase from the general domain of heterotrophs, “Life is good.”
. 
This week I’ve been reintroduced to a community of fellow heterotrophs after a year’s absence. We met in the woods on Grassy Creek’s Forest Bathing trail as they emerged  from the shady gloom, pale as the moon, a little creepy. Their scaly jointed fingers that are not fingers poked up from the leaf mould. They nodded their heads which are not heads. Not human, not fungus. What?
. 
These are plants, flowering plants, but stark white, utterly absent chlorophyll : Ghost Pipes (Heath family, Ericaceae, same family as rhododendron, azalea, huckleberry, but so eerily different). Kneel to inspect the nodding head and you’ll see that it’s a flower, one at the apex of each stem, and indeed shaped like the flowers on my blueberry bushes beside the driveway. I remember the first time I saw these odd creatures in the southern Appalachians, thriving in rich mesic woodland, clustered in deep shade with no need for photons. I was taught that they are white because they’re parasitic, taking nourishment from the roots of trees.
. 
Heterotrophic – fed by others. The opposite of autotrophic, feeding oneself. Most of the Plant Kingdom are autotrophs, industriously creating sugar and cellulose from the nothing of light and CO2. Quite a number in Kingdom Protist are autotrophs (algae, for example), and even a few in the Bacteria Kingdom (cyanobacteria). All the rest of us are unable to feed ourselves. I can make Vitamin D when sunlight strikes my skin, but as an obligate heterotroph I must consume autotrophs to survive.
. 
❦
. 
Personal and Planetary Health—The Connection With Dietary Choices. This is the title of a feature editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Society (June 6, 2023; Volume 329, Number 21). It isn’t difficult to imagine the message the editorialist will promote, but it is novel to emphasize the connection between choices that lead to personal well-being and and choices that promote global health. To quote: Physicians have historically focused on patient health and relegated planetary health to environmentalists and lawmakers. However, dietary choices are the largest driver of chronic diseases. National surveys indicate less than 5% of the US population meets dietary fiber recommendations due to inadequate plant-based food intake. Plant-based diets are also associated with reduced incidence of chronic diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and cancer in multiple studies.
. 
I became a phyto-heterotroph (it’s easier to spell vegetarian) not for personal health but to reduce my ecological footprint. Eating plants instead of eating things that eat plants has a frankly unbelieveable impact on agricultural water consumption, loss of habitat to grazing and animal feedstock production, and methane and nitrous oxide production (25 times and 298 times more potent greenhouse gases than CO2). Even the most diehard omni-heterotroph could probably tolerate a phyto-heterotroph diet one or two days a week.
. 
And those Ghost Pipes (Monotropa uniflora) – I read this week that they are actually myco-heterotrophs. Their roots entangle with and suck sugar from the fungal filaments of the mycorrhizal network that permeates all healthy soil. Alas, all fungi are themselves heterotrophs. They reciprocate with green plants to provide minerals and water in exchange for sugar, some of which they evidently pass on to the Ghost Pipes. Without GREEN, none of us would be here.
. 
❦ ❦ ❦
. 
Because the Demented World Repeats Itself
. 
In Europe again tonight,
a human being is dying
. 
under a bombed-to-rubble house
or in the street – bicycle basket
. 
spilling its loaf of bread.
This particular human is dying
. 
whose dying makes me despair
though I’m no one in particular
. 
and they’re no one in particular
to me. I’m just another human
. 
who will be dying, but not yet,
and who lies warm under my quilt
. 
of many blessings, wondering
what can be done about humans
. 
when I can’t dissuade the sparrow
who attacks our window
. 
slamming and slamming
his reflection – the enemy
. 
he keeps seeing but not
seeing as himself.
. 
Susan Cohen
from Tar River Poetry, Volume 62, Number 2. Spring 2023. © 2023 TRP
. 
❦ ❦ ❦
. 
I don’t subscribe to many literary journals, but I don’t let my Tar River Poetry lapse. Volume 62/Number 2 arrived last week containing a few familiar names but many more names that I now want to remain familiar with. Micro-themes seem to weave through its fifty pages of poetry like a carrier wave that fills the room with music. A few poems juxtaposed are having a conversation, but when the next in line picks up the thread the color and texture have suddenly shifted again. Always something new, always engaging, deeply felt, deeply connecting. Thank you to Luke Whisnant and all the perceptive editors who send me a fresh volume twice a year.
. 
Tar River Poetry is published twice yearly with the support of the Department of English, East Carolina University. http://tarriverpoetry.com. 113 Erwin Hall, Mail Stop 159, ECU, East Fifth Street, Greenville NC 27858-4353.
Shane Sheely has published three books of poetry and directs and teaches in the creative writing MFA program at University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Susan Cohen, author of three full-length poetry collections, is a former journalist living in Berkeley, California.
Steve Cushman’s first poetry collection, How Birds Fly, won the 2018 Lena Shull Book Award of the North Carolina Poetry Society.
. 
❦ ❦ ❦
. 
The Candiru Fish is So Small It Could Swim Up Your Urethra
. 
is what Mrs. Hart, my 9th grade biology teacher, said
thirty-some years ago, so when Julie says let’s go skinny
. 
dipping, instead of being excited I’m transported back to
Mrs. Hart’s class in St. Petersburg where all we had to cool
. 
us off on those Florida afternoons was one lone window unit,
so we sweated through her lectures until the day we sat up
. 
straight and listened as she discussed urethras and penises
and the dangers lurking beneath the surface. Come on, Julie
. 
is saying, naked now, her clothes in a stack at the shore,
her pale shoulders bouncing up and down at the water’s surface.
. 
I strip bare, tell myself we’re nowhere near the Amazon River,
run with everything I have into the water, into Julie’s arms,
. 
and again she’s rescuing me from myself, from my silly fears,
and those murky, dangerous things, seen and unseen.
. 
Steve Cushman
from Tar River Poetry, Volume 62, Number 2. Spring 2023. © 2023 TRP
. 
❦ ❦ ❦
Doughton Park Tree 2020-11-22
. 

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Dave Manning, Human Nature, and That Other Apple (2)

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , , , , , on May 5, 2023| 2 Comments »

[This is a re-posting of one of my personal favorites, from July 27, 2020. May we each discover what is most perfectly suited to our individual nature; may we discover the perfect curvature and gravity of the universe. And may we continue to re-discover the poetry of the late David Treadway Manning, one of my favorite human beings.

I am re-posting rather than creating an original offering for this date because our neighborhood is still digging out from a tornado that struck us on April 28, 2023. No people injured, many hundreds of trees down, brighter wider horizons absent their green banners, a few nights of darker skies and brighter stars and the company of the waxing moon.    —-   Bill ]

Young Isaac is strolling through the orchard, another undifferentiated non-linear autumn afternoon of this perplexing equation we call life. Some of the fruit has detached itself and translocated several meters closer to the center of the earth. It has begun, with the help of fermenting microorganisms, to succumb to entropy. Isaac steps in it. He slips.

Isaac’s 70 kilograms, density of water, accelerate at 9.8 meters per second per second. Suddenly prone, the gravity of the situation strikes him. There, 10 centimeters from the tip of his nose, lies a perfect red spheroid. Glossy. Fragrant. The tiny lenticels on its taut unblemished skin are arranged with the symmetry of stars distributed across the heavenly sphere. “What an apple!” young Isaac exclaims, “Artios!” (his years of Greek instruction now finally relevant): That which is perfectly suited to its nature. The essence of appleness.

And how will Isaac’s own essence be transformed by this epiphany? How will yours and mine? No longer undifferentiated, will he discover his many gifts and their ideal trajectory? Will we ours? For are we not each of us an essence, our process of formation either distracted and garbled by the noisy physics of our history and our surroundings or alternatively able to grasp that trajectory perfectly suited to our unique nature? Besides mass and density and the ability to struggle upright against gravity, don’t we human animals also possess the agency of choice and change and discovery?

Isaac sits up and regards the apple. You know where this is headed. It will be 218 years before young Albert slips and falls and realizes that what Isaac experienced is actually the curvature of space. Meanwhile why don’t we all, each of us, sit up and regard our nature. Artios! To become that which is the perfect expression of our nature. It’s about time.

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I have been a DAVID MANNING fan since I first sat up and discovered poetry. Whether he does it with a compassion that draws me deeper into the circle of human family or with a wry and pointed barb that makes me snort, he regards human nature and tells its truths. I will be the first person in line when his NEW AND SELECTED is released from PRESS 53 later this year.

And I have been favored to preview the manuscript. Wandering these wonderful poems spanning decades I enter an inner landscape and pass from reader to personal companion. There is a deep imagination at work; there is joy and no lack of laughter and sometimes a little weirdness; there are bright moments of insight and connection.

Most of all there is WONDER. No aspect of our human situation or our confounding universe goes unnoticed. David’s artistry gathers a desert landscape, a snatch of opera, a funky conversation and weaves from them with perfect sense and sensitivity an affirmation. When I reach the final page I say, “YES, that is the way it is.”

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Sailing with Anne

Santa Monica, California, 1950

After her sailing class we cast off
into the ruffled Pacific blue, tide
incoming, echoes of great breakers
lapping the dock. She-the sailor,
the tiller, mine.

As we headed west, tacking
into a strong breeze I remember
marveling at who she was
to do these things. I imagined her
at the helm become Anne Bonny,
running a four-master down,
the setting sun turning red lights
in her hair.

I hope we left something there-
if only a boat paint-scrape
or salt spray from her hair.
Maybe something from that day
was never lost, but joined
the Pacific’s history, some trace
still riding the blue circuit
between the poles, with the sea-grape
and tiny life that make the coral.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .

Star Journey

Sometimes at night I return

to the Griffith Park planetarium

where stars from the surrounding hills

come out to music.

North of Los Feliz

I step from city lights into the night

sky of Patagonia with its wind-swept shores

under the warm lights of Fornax,

Fomalhaut, Alpha Crucis, a bright canopy

of southern stars, to music-Gymnopedie,

Satie’s barefoot dance.

Then, under the soft night sky,

I take off my shoes

and find my way into the stars.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .

David Manning’s NEW AND SELECTED POEMS is anticipated later this year from Press 53.

Star Journey first appeared in KaKalaK 2017 – Anthology of Carolina Poets
Sailing with Anne first appeared in Pinesong: The North Carolina Poetry Society

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