As If They Were a Basket
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As If They Were a Basket, a poem elaborated by nature and by science
This slim chapbook presents a rather lyrical poem by the author then purports to (and quixotically does) draw parallels and commentary on it, line by line, from naturalistic memoirs, diaries and scientific observations by writers in those fields, all properly annotated, each of the three aspects running concurrently and developing its own but companionable sense.
The volume starts off by way of introduction with the following quote by scientist D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson: “We begin by describing the shape of an object in the simple words of common speech; we end by defining it in the precise language of mathematics; and the one method tends to follow the other in strict scientific order and historical continuity.” It continues with a museum photograph of the skeleton of the Irish Elk which is, in fact, neither Irish nor an elk. 44 pages. Limited Edition.
Excerpt
As If They Were a Basket
framed by the geometries
of beak, tooth, nail,
It soon developed that they were not in the glade nor the thicket.36
...the room was full of rustling, as though it was packed with birds.46
He set up his microscope, and began to make labels. He moved things from day to day from drawer to drawer as he found himself with a plethora of beetle sudden plague of frogs. 46
The clock hands spun around. The hourglass scattered its sand. The distant roarof mines, mills, and ports beat against the window. Footfalls echoed away. The loving and the lost were all long since asleep. My room became an island in the cosmos; this was where the light burned for my solitary thinking, my questions, and my guessing. 4
42 If we reflect first on the different stages of the pleasure which nature affords, we find that the first is independent of our insight into the workings of its powers, indeed almost independent of the actual character of the area in which we find ourselves.
25 ...if force can be conserved in one situation all the more energy is set free for the upkeep of the rest.
