Eden on a plate ~ A prayer before meals

We ventured into the woods last month, to stay awhile and it was most serene. Life crawled to the pace of a lazy moonrise over mountains, swift sunsets into the ocean, a glittering array of stars some evenings, the veil of mist and fog on others .

The leaves always have the best view of the mist

The house we lived in, employed a well and septic system, so the owners requested that we not flush any bad poetry or cell phones down the toilet 😁 These instructions duly printed and posted next to the flush tank came as a relief actually, because we were there with dear friends and the days were simply marked in the passage of beauty. All words dissipated as the sun split like atoms on a glittering lake every morning. Mushrooms signalled purpose in mossy undergrowth as we strode through the woods after lazy watermelon breakfasts,  each day unfolded like a breeze through glades happy in wildflowers,  whispering to the woods in meditative repose.

Watermelon Sunrise

There was a lull of the senses coursing through ripples of moments, the kind where time ceased to be a commodity to be bartered, divided or sold. It began to take on a shape of its own. It could simply stretch like bread dough and we would fold into it in the manner of soft herbs while the gluten held the minutes together in the translucence of a doughy windowpane to other definitive realms.

Fungal intentions !

We barbecued away the hours, tested our palate, worked our limbs on winding trails and at one point, I felt my neural impulse had merged with the landscape, when you know the plant brain coursing through the tap root is deeply aware of your presence  as you step gingerly over knotted, entwined surface roots and you can feel the collective body heave a sigh in the fluttering, delightful shimmer of laughing leaves as happy thoughts curl up in smoke through a forest canopy.

We soon established a mealtime tradition of praying and one evening I had the privilege of doing so, except that it was difficult. I am no inverted believer and with  no one to direct my prayers to, I did manage in the end, something that was along the lines of the poem below, made up of facets of our day.

Thunder Hole, Maine; a calm sea earlier that day.
Saying Grace

The day roped in happiness
like tidal waters
streaked with seaweed,
joyous to be afloat again.
The rocky inlet imbued
a stony demeanour, while
calmly contemplating
the resounding consonants
of a cavern within.
I could hear it swish syllables
as it lapped in the waves,
and I now channel
in gratitude,
that exuberant overflow,
and this,
which needs no rationale.
As we sit at a table,
enjoying a meal
cobbled together
from the sweet of corn,
the crunch of lettuce,
the ocean yield
of Piscean gleam,
it has begun to look
like Eden on a plate,
and I allow myself
to feel touched.
I am touched.
Gratitude is a verb
when I feel thankful
for being able to share
in the sacrificial generosity
of plants and animals.
Do we feel blessed?
We must,
for what could be sweeter
than that
we haven't been refused
- a share
of the Universal largesse.
From this bounty,
we take as we may,
so we simply survive
to another day.
It is wonderful to be alive
and I am grateful.
We are grateful.
Seaweed along a sandy beach on the Eastern Seaboard

On Cotton Thistle ~ repost

It was in a conversation I had with a dear friend, earlier this morning, that it occurred to me I had to rewrite the poem I wrote yesterday. We spoke of exile, loss and somehow, I wanted the poem to reflect these themes. It made me ponder the similarities to ecological succession; especially the equilibrium and accompanying insularity of stable or climax plant communities in the environment [1] I realize the poem is far from perfect. I used the prose style as before.

Sodden upheavals of community
lay in the wake of land
excavated, in the toppling
of crowns, the exile of roots.
In such evisceration of aggressive
sentiment of a floral dominance,
freshly ruptured earth lay abandoned,
bogged in tears of those feeling
entitled to such generous pasture.
Resurrected on these cleared
barrens are the flowers of Christ,
reclaiming within the sentient heart,
compassionate space for the perennial
outcasts, the invasive, the émigrés,
but they say so of any non-natives
breaching confines of insularity. 
And a man is never a prophet
in his own land, so here on
hollowed ground, preaching gospel
of love are a globulised community
of royal florets, turning another 
cheek to the sun. Bees with stingers
alight softly on sweet outpourings
of love in nectar, in purple goblets.
Here, at the crossroads of stings
and spines, nails pale in comparison.
And so it goes, the flower lives
to sweeten the life of a bee and
the bee exists to ferry love to flowers.

It has been many months of posting regularly to my blog and sometimes to social media. I find myself a bit depleted and need to take some time off, so I can concentrate on my writing. It’s been a journey this past year and quite heartening to discover that my love for the art, reflects back profoundly in the mundanity of the strange places I visit or the novelty I encounter in those which I have already experienced or even in the ubiquity of the everyday, so much so, that I wish to embroider it all into my poetry. I need to sit still for awhile and should return soon with fresh ideas and new poems.



On Spinosity and Stinging Affections ~ a note on the Cotton Thistle

Baruch Spinoza wasn’t far from the truth when he said “The investigation of Nature in general is the basis of philosophy”

I stood in the presence of giants today. The tallest cotton thistle (I have ever seen) and I, inhabited a moment of stillness, of biblical proportions. The company of plants is never boring and I love a challenge;  this non-native vigorous biennial with coarse, spiny leaves provoked me to write a poem.

Onopordum acanthium is from the family Asteraceae, with especially large populations of this flowering plant existing in the United States [1] Spiny bracts and globose flower heads sporting coloured ray and disc florets are simply beautiful.

The cotton thistle is considered a noxious invasive weed for it reduces the production of forage, prohibits land utilization for livestock and blocks access for people and wildlife. The dense stands of the large, spiny plants exclude animals from grazing as well as access to water [2] We pattern the presence of plants tailored to our own existence but this species is a great source of nectar for insects. In the time I stood next to a variety of wild flowers, all stinging insects made a beeline for the cotton thistle.

This variety of  plant tends to colonise disturbed pastures. In its native range, cotton thistle is weakly competitive and needs gaps to regenerate, to develop and maintain stands; populations of Cotton Thistle tend to retreat when disturbance ceases [1] So it is ironically a plant that grows in the absence of aggressive competitors, for a disturbed pasture is essentially one where the land is stripped of vegetation through man-made changes to the land surface, like clearing or excavation.

On Stings and Spines and Nails of Crosses
The land was disturbed 
in an upheaval of community,
crowns displaced, roots exiled.
When cotton thistle staked claim
to sodden earth bogged in tearful
commiserations, it resurrected like
the flower of Christ. Invasive,
émigré? What's Native ? No man
was ever a prophet in his own land.
And here, preaching a gospel
of love were a globulised community
of centripetal rays and centrifugal
discs, they turned the other cheek
and more. Bees with stingers went soft
on compassionate flowers unwrapping
sweetly, nectar or love.
They crossed stings and spines
and even nails, paled in comparison.
The flower lives to sweeten
the life of a bee and the bee
exists to ferry love to flowers.




No Perfect Measure

An evening set in metered rhyme,
of pinecones, gainfully bracted
in the manner of spiralling time.

No perfect measure yields a woody cone
although conifer strobilus gilded ratio makes.
The standard mesh of numbers alone

symbolise a hope that a glorious God
assembled in a perfect factory line,
this defiant change to perfectly flawed.

The Golden Fleece

There are plants that look like a tangle of golden threads. These holostemparasites lack the green of chlorophyll and the ability to photosynthesize but they have unique structures called ‘haustoria’ that penetrate into the vascular tissues of a host plant to access their nutrients, specifically into the phloem tissues, so they are phloem feeders [1] They lack roots and leaves and I was very disturbed to find a mass of them atop a patch of Ivy. Yesterday, there were two tangles and they spread so fast,  I had never thought golden dodder to exist anywhere around this area. Cuscuta campestris , as this species is known in the botanical world, most certainly startled me on my walk.

Cuscuta campestris

Researchers are unable to explain how Cuscuta evolved. They have since placed the plant in the family Convolvulaceae, unlike the Cuscutaceae that I had learnt of during my degree. The plant is phylogenetically close to the tribe Ipomoea that contains all those popular twining species we know of, like Morning Glory and Sweet Potatoes, and here it is, amassed on Ivy, making me uneasy and yet, I marvel at the nature of being.

One simply requires removal of its golden twining stems and pruning of the host plant, so that the garden looks less of a mess. Yet, the plant is an ideal species in research due to its lack of differentiation of plant tissue like other complex Angiosperms. The plant can even create a bridge between different plants for transmission of diseases from one host to another, which can be of immense importance in scientific investigations. The haustorium though, remains little understood as a specialized outgrowth that is unlike any other found in the plant world as also does the fact that Cuscuta isn’t typically host specific.

Dodder haustoria penetrating host stem. | Credit: Spike Walker. Wellcome Images. Light micrograph of a transverse section through dodder (Cuscuta sp) and its host stem, showing haustoria penetrating the host tissues.

In the manner of man’s anthropomorphizing ways, Dodder has been described as possibly the most intelligent plant using taste, smell, movement and touch to manipulate other plants, and hijacking and transferring its genes, large molecules like DNA and RNA, including viruses through its specialized structures. Dodder is also able to use messenger RNA to track the condition of the host plant or to alter it which is similar to horizontal gene transfer between plants and microbes used for the genetic modification of plants species [2]

It is a very unusual holoparasite that even produces greenish to white flowers arranged in a cymose inflorescence. The seeds of Cuscuta campestris may have arrived on the patch of Ivy, dispersed by wind, water, birds, other animals, or by man with machines and planting material contaminated by dodder seeds. Children too, interestingly, can be agents of dispersal in that they tend to ferry the plant stems across a distance [3] The plant is of no economic importance and is considered a noxious weed and here it is, sullying the garden and I don’t know what to think.

So I wondered of each haustorium embedded, producing biochemicals that could dissolve phloem components of the Ivy for absorption, without in fact dissolving itself. Was the Ivy in pain? Was the Dodder, a sadistic plant? Its simple stems had matted the surface and would shade the leaves of the Ivy if left to its own devices, reducing photosynthesis and eventually killing the plant. On the other hand, the Ivy itself seems like an opportunist, crowding out the surface, because horticulturists simply appreciated its cosmetic allure in having climbed historically valuable edifices and now deem it a useful ornamental.

The poem is about that which we do not understand except in the language we know of or the stories we hear, whether those be scientific, cultural  or mythological. This tangled mess of Dodder, that I reluctantly call beautiful,  demanded a divine origin and the Greek myth of the golden fleece seemed most apt. (I have added notes below, on the story, that make for interesting reading) The poem is an attempt at a synthesis of our limited knowledge through the creative lens of our collective illusions.

The Golden Fleece of Dodder 

The world was upside down for a gilded moment,
like roots seeking sun, a golden fleece over Ivy
and your tangled mess lifted to the heavens.

This savage union demanded you twine so,
salivating ecstasy within sentient stratum.
Do you feel, as you kneel and grope leafy vines,

the same as when Poseidon had his way
with Theophane, to let out his inner beast
and make you in his image.

You wore it for kingship, golden, fibrous,
for now you walk over your leafy subjects,
taxing their sunny labours and feeling svelte.

Your weave is the hurried knit of a harried tale
and children playing Argonauts,  will snip at your aphorisms
to pass them on in manner of plundering recruits.

They constellate the land like you seed the stars
in the myths of man; What fascination holds such simple staff
that morphs to serpent on yielding strand?


In Greek mythology, the Golden Fleece is the fleece of Chrysomallos, the winged ram with golden wool, which was held in Colchis. The fleece, a symbol of authority and kingship, figures in the tale of the hero Jason and his crew of Argonauts, who set out on a quest for it by the order of King Pelias, in order to place Jason rightfully on the throne of Iolcus in Thessaly. Through the help of Medea, they acquire the Golden Fleece. The story, of great antiquity, was current in the time of Homer (eighth century BC). It survives in various forms, among which the details vary [4](Wikipedia)

The ram was fathered by Poseidon in his primitive ram-form with the nymph, Theophane, the granddaughter of Helios, the sun-god. The golden ram saved Phrixus, the son of Athamas the Minyan, a founder of Halos in Thessaly but also king of the city of Orchomenus in Boeotia (a region of southeastern Greece) and the goddess Nephele. The ram took the boy Phrixus to Colchis and in essence, this act returned the golden ram to the god Poseidon, and became the constellation Aries. Phrixus settled in the house of Aeetes, son of Helios the sun god. He hung the Golden Fleece preserved from the ram on an oak in a grove sacred to Ares (Mars), the god of war and one of the Twelve Olympians. The fleece was guarded by a never-sleeping dragon with teeth that could become soldiers when planted in the ground. The dragon was at the foot of the tree on which the fleece was placed. In some versions of the story, Jason attempts to put the guard serpent to sleep [4](Wikipedia)



Takeshi Furuhashi, Katsuhisa Furuhashi & Wolfram Weckwerth (2011) The parasitic mechanism of the holostemparasitic plant Cuscuta, Journal of Plant Interactions, 6:4, 207-219, DOI: 10.1080/17429145.2010.541945




Image Credit:

Picture Credits~https://mappingignorance.org/2016/08/22/parasite-plant-check/


Animals feel emotions, even those of regret and disappointment, I thought I knew that, when I indulged in poetic anthropomorphism. In the book I have been reading on ‘The Inner Life of Animals’, the author Peter Wohlleben observes, that regret is an emotion which usually protects us from repeating our mistakes because it stops us wasting energy by engaging in dangerous or pointless behaviour over and over again.

Wohlleben draws attention to the work of  researchers at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis who observed rats in regard to both these emotions. He says //They built a special “restaurant row” for rats – a ring with four spokes leading to four different feeding zones.  When a rat came to the entrance of one of the spokes, a sound indicated how long the wait for food would be: the higher the sound, the longer the wait.  And now the rodents began to act like people.  Some lost patience and went on to the next spoke in the hope they would be served more quickly.  Sometimes, however, the sound was even higher there, meaning the wait time would be even longer.  Now the animals looked wistfully back in the direction of the spoke where they had just been, but they also grew more determined not to change zones again but to wait longer for their food.  People react in similar ways – for example, when we switch lines at the grocery store and realize we’ve made the wrong choice.  The researchers detected patterns of activity in the brains of the rats similar to patterns in our brains when we mentally replay our predicament.  That’s what makes regret different from disappointment.  The latter kicks in when we don’t get what we were hoping for.  In contrast, regret kicks in when we also realize there could have been a better outcome.  And researchers Adam P. Steiner and David Redish discovered that rats can clearly do that //

The ability to gauge the future should help mitigate feelings of regret and disappointment, as one should then always know the right course of action. Since it is impossible to predict completely accurately, even the weather, one could simply change one’s perspective but this may be a major oversimplification.

What of the system itself that generates predictable trajectories, like in ‘the restaurant row’ created by the researchers, which invariably ends up with a slew of disappointed rats who now regret their choices unaware of how the system is designed.

Given this aforementioned research, I thought about the city crowds from a strictly zoomorphic perspective; the inefficiency of rush hour, the disappointed looking faces in an exaggerated hurry while the system draws to a crawl, and those blighted souls regretting the last minute dash into a busy supermarket. There is a self-sameness to it all, people moving through the paces of their groundhog rush hour.

The photos I took inside a subway tunnel in Manhattan. The poem though, is a work in progress.

The Grid, is freedom along angles run 
amuck, between glimpses of the walking
white man, pixelated on a traffic light.
One can flee the compass, turn West,
then defiantly perambulate the perimeter
of an urban garden, for the thrill of green.
The city they say, crowded out the man,
but man is simply a crowd of one, among
the shadows that slink along the sidewalk,
until they slowly descend, into the entrails
of rat city, tunnelling predetermined paths.
Charting a course of darkness, through
the vast sea of breathless faces, where
a mosaic of tiles brighten the embedded
smiles and the haze of imprisoned light,
in the selfsame burrows of sunken places