Alison Deming, (UA Regent’s Professor of Creative Writing and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in Environment & Social Justice) and Susan Lyman (longtime friend and sculptor based in Provincetown MA, and part-time winter resident of Tucson) are participating in the exhibition “Breath and Matter: Poet/Sculptor Collaborations” at Boston Sculptors Gallery in Boston MA from July 18 - August 12, 2018. The 24 collaborating teams took on the challenge of the question posed by Robert Pinsky, “What has art made of breath to do with an art made of matter?”

The pair of artists together explore the plastic relationship between wood and words as the material of their artistic practice. They take their cue from John Fowles' The Tree: "the real subject of this arboreal excursion is not the trees at all, but the importance in art of the unpredictable, the unaccountable, the intuitive, the not discernibly useful." Trees here serve as found material, metaphor and means of being present. 

If you can't make it to the exhibit in Boston, they were kind enough to share some of their collaborative art with us. 

 

CASTALIA                       

Alison Hawthorne Deming

 

1

during my darkest grief the forest

was like an open sea birch trees

the beacon I used to steady my position

 

my brain felt at home among

saplings that tangle seeking light

that part of the soul Aristotle thought

 

we held common with plants

days and weeks cutting trail

at first moving three feet

 

through thicket then ten then

deeper into black spruce

bow saw and clippers

 

slung on my back like

Diana’s quiver trying to sense

how the path should rise

 

past cobble and copse

into high fern meadow

and beyond into balsam fir

 

towering so high they make

beneath them a living room

of reindeer moss and fungi

 

woods long worked by men

timbers and fieldstones

oxen-hauled downhill even

 

the skins of island houses

cloaked with fish scale

of cedar shingles cut here

 

where hardly a cedar tree

can be seen so fruitful

were those times of building

 

the Greeks had a way to speak

about depth so that each spring

had a name and history

 

and a supplicant had a place

to go to beg for wisdom

or healing or a song to make

 

that part of the soul

held in common with song

feel at home North Head

 

Seal Cove Dark Harbour

do well for singing but

every place needs its Castalia

 

where older thought

emerges like steam

from vents in a caldera

 

2

the island lies under a pall

of cold rain sea churlish

and aluminum gray

 

white caps slapping

horizon dissolved

no edge just one waving

 

continuity of libidinous water

two bald eagles feed along shore 

rain means nothing to them

 

cold means nothing to them

fish mean everything

the birds rise from below the long bank

 

return to woods their wings

sated and slow gulls wobble

their wings at home in raucous

 

air the birds know where

they’re going which may be

nowhere but they keep going

 

because that is what

their bodies are made to do

rain means something

 

to mosses they puff up

put on velvet suits and shine

like green carpet movie stars 

 

rain means something

to mushrooms each cap

smaller than a push pin

 

constellations forming

overnight the forest floor

lighting up from below

 

rain means something to deer

they lie down in fern meadows

under tall birches it means

 

nothing but cold to lobstermen

who motor out haul traps

dawn and dusk rain means something

 

to songbirds who clam up

when it starts and when it stops

renew their lease on songful sky

 

3

thwack of the driver as it slams

sledge against stake

to anchor the weir stakes

 

men working on floating raft

rhythmic thunks

as they breach ocean floor

 

birch saplings lashed for top posts

evening the boats come

home the bay silken calm

 

wisps of fog drift over

brittle grass pheasant

swift robin even gulls

 

tuck their cold feet

under downy bellies

glide toward sleep

 

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ENCOUNTERING TREES

Alison Hawthorne Deming

 

Old birches lead complicated lives.

One falls in a gale then lying on its side

feels sun on its bark and begins

a new branch that becomes a trunk

and rises. Another grows a knee

for support after wind has made

it kneel. One grows an elbow to recline on

as it descends from vertical to horizontal.

Another grows a looping branch

like the curve in a jump rope

turning an obstacle into

a gesture of architectural grace.

But the grandmother tree is the marvel

sprawling like an opulent carefree queen

trunk split in the center like a woman’s cleft

the gap sending side branches out to snake low

until they reach beyond the canopy

to find enough light to ascend.

A tree that is a community of trees

a tree that refuses damage

turning storm and infestation

into a form that holds its ground

and grows stronger for all it suffers.

Grandmother tree, teach me, hold me,

protect me. I have walked through

a dark forest, red needled floor

lit with ghost flowers. Indian pipes

we used to call them as if to see them

is to hear the land’s indigenous music.

At dawn I sat on a rotted log and read

The New York Times on my smart phone,

America still going to the mean dogs,

while squirrels scolded, chickadees

fed in a noisy mob among spruce boughs,

bald eagle chittered from somewhere

out of sight. What is it to endure but

to feel the cadence of uncertainty

accepted as the condition for growth?

 

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