Microbes migrate millions of light years mold mushrooms into methane clouds that ignite by a lightning strike char the world but natural means gravity waves pull earth out of orbit to melt into sun. Spirits have become wisps warped in to no-time but atoms still move to the beat of a multi trillion universe that carries on just in an evolved form. Surfers 🏄♀️ know. Natural progression.
I am imagining the silence of the world without us. No hum of humans going about their business. No aircraft in the sky. No yak, yak, yak. Just what nature has to say. Thanks, Dave. PS love the pic of the tree!
I also meant to say - I love that you love the tree pic. It's one of my favourite trees - in a patch or urban remnant forest in our old home town. A true survivor. We were back there last year for an extended visit and I went looking to see if it was still there. For obvious reasons, it looks like it can't last long, but it has been at this degree of lean for at least 25 years now - since I first saw it....
Yep, you are an eternal optimist, and I'm so glad. I think that the human world is basically run by toddlers. All of us, so young. It's like there is a game, and our fate, whatever it is, is being determined by three-year-olds. If we last, I think we will grow up into a world run by twenty-year-olds, which isn't esp. hopeful.
Yes... I hope so my friend. I'm just sitting down to write my first beach/ocean/nature post for our Springtime, after spending yesterday out around my favourite local coastal wilderness, watching whales and waves and wondering while wandering...
I have a whole architecture poem I could post instead, about the Sydney Opera House, but my mind is full of the sea today and just last night someone wrote something extremely kind about my Splash Zone story from last year - which I created as a direct consequence of a conversation you and I were having right here on Substack.
Sometimes those congruencies just all line up and show you where you need to go....
Best Wishes - Dave :)
(PS If, a few hours from now, you see that I have posted a poem about the Sydney Opera House after all, then you will know I got bogged down at the beach....) :)
I have to be the eternal skeptic here, Jed. I think mother nature is fighting back, as best she can. And I think we are forcing her hand, every day.
In any case, there is no mother nature, only a complex web of ecosystems that we are consistently disrupting. I'm not saying that we will be destroyed. I think I'm just saying that none of us should be at all surprised if our species dies off because we are so greedy, so self-assured, so desparate, so blinded by our self-righteousness that we will find a rationale all for anything we want to do.
Not need to do, want to do. Are driven to do.
(Sometimes I think of an alien race coming here, sifting through some ancient rubble, and finding a penny. Finding so many pennies. And the aliens' wonder over the humble penny, over all the pennies this species left behind.)
I think I'm saying that all the things that make us so magnificent, are the very things that will kill us in the end. And perhaps, no absolutely the worse thing, is our emotional consciousness.
Now this sounds like a rant. I don't mean it that way.
And I do want to make it clear that I don't really care very much, because I am soon to leave, relatively speaking. My children will have no children.
I'm almost to the point that I believe all this reality will simply cease to be when I'm gone. A selfish view. But really, it's true.
Everything I know of the world will be finished with my last, and I hope, relieved breath.
Well, my dear, I find your whole response above weirdly beautiful and I feel it all the way.
What peace I have comes from the sense that the whole project is not and never was about my personal achievement and gratification. I am a small role player in a greater drama which, I feel, is meaningful and purposeful... but the perspective of the project is immense and the microdramas can be hellacious.
I find contentment and hope in two things ...
One is that nature always holds the trump card. (Haha political irony unintended but the irony applies)
Death.
The Old Testament shows us that God gradually came to his senses shortening individual lifespans from the Abrahamic 900s to a more palatable three score and 10.
So.
She kills us before we get catastrophically out of hand, but along the way she gives us these beautiful babies that pop into the world full of inherent hope and brightness and possibility, and it falls to them to synthesize the mess that came before.
Rinse and repeat and Mr. Hegel you pretty much had it right.
One might characterize the current state of affairs, but to slightly spoil the McEwan novel, you will see that in his mildly dystopian future, world population has drifted back down to a more manageable 4 billion or so.
Sure... a lot of collateral damage, but we know from experience that the Almighty doesn't shy away from mass extinction events.
In any case... to me this all falls vaguely into the realm of hopeful possibility.
Good lord, dude. If we bring in the gods, all bets are off! Ha!
I remain skeptical because I can't see that nature has ever been able to self-correct in the face of adversity, unless I'm missing something.
I just finished re reading ALL the Asimov Robot/Empire/Foundation books. The first wave of people to go into space from Earth were the Spacers, who figured out how to live 400-500 years. This was considered a terrible liability by the other settlers who came later, who wanted no part of Spacer life, which included scores of robots for each individual doing all the work, providing comfort, security, cooking, cleaning, healthcare, child-rearing, etc., etc.
The Settlers became the dominate force and the Spacers who were left genetically engineered themselves into powerful hermaphrodites with telekinesis. These beings believed that a measure of their personal freedom was the right to be completely alone, only interacting with each other via video screens. It was individualism taken to the extreme.
One of the themes running through the novels is the induvial versus the collective. Asimov sees the collective as a force for good, a net positive for the galaxy. I used to agree. Now I'm not so sure. It could be that a collective mind would take the worst of it and weld it with all the force of our collective will behind it.
Anyhow, I would like to think, and rather really do want to think, that nature is working as a whole, that nature has a sort of consciousness, perhaps even a self-awareness, but I see no evidence of this. There is nothing aware about nature, even with in its individual systems. In this sense, nature is at our mercy.
This would lead to a much larger conversation about determinism, free will, and all that rot. Did you touch on determinism in your philosophy class?
Oh David, gorgeous. I hung on every single word. Years ago I bought a teeny tiny little ceramic pot at an art studio and on it there are two images: a tree stump and beside it a huckleberry growing out of the stump (as they do). And the artist inscribed these words: "It'll be OK when we are gone." Your poem made me think of it, both healing in such a transcendent way. Thank you. I love your work. I love the perspective of deep time. I loved "stabs of birdsong" and "In dying/ushering in the new -/all the old voices returning." For which I thank you utterly.
Good morning from across the world, dear Stephanie. I write because.... I just need to, I think - the way a bird needs to sing - but I do also write to communicate.
Of course - choosing to write is something that is entirely within my control, but whether other people will read what I write, and whether they will find it meaningful..... those things are not within my control at all. A writer - or an artist or musician - we send our work out into the world and then people make of it what they will. We hope it will have meaning for someone else, but hope is all we have.
So sitting here in my early morning, with the mist rising over the river outside, your wonderful comment has moved me deeply. I could not reply at first - so I dipped into your own writing again and by chance the first thing I opened was your "Choosing Creation" post, which I had somehow previously missed. https://substack.com/@treespeech/p-165723289
I think the two pieces - my poem and your essay - share much in common.
Enormous thanks, Stephanie, for your profoundly thoughtful comment.
I simply adore how you put it, Dave...that you write as a bird needs to sing. Never knowing who will hear it or how it will be received, but always with the hope that it makes some kind of cosmic difference because its source is true. Love the image of you reading and commenting as the mist lifts off the river. Ahhhh!
Thank you for seeking beyond the headlines into a deeper framework for living. I agree that your poem and my essay share much in common, both seeking a widening lens on the travails (and beauties!!) of the modern day.
Best wishes in return and so honored to be a reader here.
Oooo... well you certainly intuited what I was trying to say. The risk - and joy - of language, is that it is imprecise and subject to such wide ranges of interpretation.
"bones or ash or a whispering wind..." - your words are a perfect match to my poem.
We live in complicated times. So much beauty. So much much horror too. I remain optimistic - because most people are capable of love and cooperative effort - but as a society we need to get better at both....
Oooh yes! As a fellow lover of dystopian films and books but the same desire to not experience it (lol) I loved this poem and your rhyme and reason around its form etc. very cool, very clever!!
Yes... It certainly is a recurrent theme for us. I suspect this is an inherent consequence of self aware cognition and empathy. Once we understand our own mortality it is a natural step to contemplate the mortality of the entire species.
Imagine what a world it would be without all the carbon and nitrogen oxides. Without the petroleum. Without the fumes. And without the aerosol sprays. What a blue, blue sky it would be. All patched up. I think the earth cannot wait to get rid of us 'clever' monkeys.
Definitely a destructive, expendable species...the effects of climate change will be massive, humans may not survive but new life will emerge and the earth will heal...you're right, the earth will be better off for it!
Another genius poem from my favourite poet, thank you for sharing. I’m still wrapping my head around the whole poem intended for the post apocalypse period when it won’t be seen because we might not be here but if we are we won’t have the tech to be able to access it.
I’ve been having weird dreams lately, I’m starting to think you might be responsible 😂
Sending best wishes from a cold and snowy North Yorkshire,
Night-day morphosisists
Microbes migrate millions of light years mold mushrooms into methane clouds that ignite by a lightning strike char the world but natural means gravity waves pull earth out of orbit to melt into sun. Spirits have become wisps warped in to no-time but atoms still move to the beat of a multi trillion universe that carries on just in an evolved form. Surfers 🏄♀️ know. Natural progression.
Wow....
Well yes - there will be a natural progression. We are part of one. What comes after?
I think there will always be an after, ever. I just won't get to see it,
but I don't really mind.
Best Wishes - Dave :)
We all will still exist, just like evaporation change form. Go surfing.
I am imagining the silence of the world without us. No hum of humans going about their business. No aircraft in the sky. No yak, yak, yak. Just what nature has to say. Thanks, Dave. PS love the pic of the tree!
Yep. That's something I loved when I lived in the desert.... I could go out into the desert and hear.......... yes; just what nature has to say.
Best Wishes - Dave :)
Hey my friend.
I also meant to say - I love that you love the tree pic. It's one of my favourite trees - in a patch or urban remnant forest in our old home town. A true survivor. We were back there last year for an extended visit and I went looking to see if it was still there. For obvious reasons, it looks like it can't last long, but it has been at this degree of lean for at least 25 years now - since I first saw it....
Best Wishes - Dave :)
Thank you for the restack, dear Alex. @Alex Prince
Best Wishes - Dave :)
Yep, you are an eternal optimist, and I'm so glad. I think that the human world is basically run by toddlers. All of us, so young. It's like there is a game, and our fate, whatever it is, is being determined by three-year-olds. If we last, I think we will grow up into a world run by twenty-year-olds, which isn't esp. hopeful.
Optimists of the world unite! The best quality of the future is that it is unknown.
I was watching this program the other night about nature's response when the world locked down for COVID.
Striking how quickly she and her beasts came charging back to relative health. Yeah... I think the old girl is gonna be fine in the long run.
Us... Not so sure... But I tend toward optimism with Mr. Dave.
I even think nature has some skin in the game. She doesn't want to extinguish us. My grandson is evidence of that.
Not unless we force her hand anyway...
Yes... I hope so my friend. I'm just sitting down to write my first beach/ocean/nature post for our Springtime, after spending yesterday out around my favourite local coastal wilderness, watching whales and waves and wondering while wandering...
I have a whole architecture poem I could post instead, about the Sydney Opera House, but my mind is full of the sea today and just last night someone wrote something extremely kind about my Splash Zone story from last year - which I created as a direct consequence of a conversation you and I were having right here on Substack.
Sometimes those congruencies just all line up and show you where you need to go....
Best Wishes - Dave :)
(PS If, a few hours from now, you see that I have posted a poem about the Sydney Opera House after all, then you will know I got bogged down at the beach....) :)
Going to check now my brother. Follow your wonderful instincts always!
I have to be the eternal skeptic here, Jed. I think mother nature is fighting back, as best she can. And I think we are forcing her hand, every day.
In any case, there is no mother nature, only a complex web of ecosystems that we are consistently disrupting. I'm not saying that we will be destroyed. I think I'm just saying that none of us should be at all surprised if our species dies off because we are so greedy, so self-assured, so desparate, so blinded by our self-righteousness that we will find a rationale all for anything we want to do.
Not need to do, want to do. Are driven to do.
(Sometimes I think of an alien race coming here, sifting through some ancient rubble, and finding a penny. Finding so many pennies. And the aliens' wonder over the humble penny, over all the pennies this species left behind.)
I think I'm saying that all the things that make us so magnificent, are the very things that will kill us in the end. And perhaps, no absolutely the worse thing, is our emotional consciousness.
Now this sounds like a rant. I don't mean it that way.
And I do want to make it clear that I don't really care very much, because I am soon to leave, relatively speaking. My children will have no children.
I'm almost to the point that I believe all this reality will simply cease to be when I'm gone. A selfish view. But really, it's true.
Everything I know of the world will be finished with my last, and I hope, relieved breath.
Well, my dear, I find your whole response above weirdly beautiful and I feel it all the way.
What peace I have comes from the sense that the whole project is not and never was about my personal achievement and gratification. I am a small role player in a greater drama which, I feel, is meaningful and purposeful... but the perspective of the project is immense and the microdramas can be hellacious.
I find contentment and hope in two things ...
One is that nature always holds the trump card. (Haha political irony unintended but the irony applies)
Death.
The Old Testament shows us that God gradually came to his senses shortening individual lifespans from the Abrahamic 900s to a more palatable three score and 10.
So.
She kills us before we get catastrophically out of hand, but along the way she gives us these beautiful babies that pop into the world full of inherent hope and brightness and possibility, and it falls to them to synthesize the mess that came before.
Rinse and repeat and Mr. Hegel you pretty much had it right.
One might characterize the current state of affairs, but to slightly spoil the McEwan novel, you will see that in his mildly dystopian future, world population has drifted back down to a more manageable 4 billion or so.
Sure... a lot of collateral damage, but we know from experience that the Almighty doesn't shy away from mass extinction events.
In any case... to me this all falls vaguely into the realm of hopeful possibility.
Good lord, dude. If we bring in the gods, all bets are off! Ha!
I remain skeptical because I can't see that nature has ever been able to self-correct in the face of adversity, unless I'm missing something.
I just finished re reading ALL the Asimov Robot/Empire/Foundation books. The first wave of people to go into space from Earth were the Spacers, who figured out how to live 400-500 years. This was considered a terrible liability by the other settlers who came later, who wanted no part of Spacer life, which included scores of robots for each individual doing all the work, providing comfort, security, cooking, cleaning, healthcare, child-rearing, etc., etc.
The Settlers became the dominate force and the Spacers who were left genetically engineered themselves into powerful hermaphrodites with telekinesis. These beings believed that a measure of their personal freedom was the right to be completely alone, only interacting with each other via video screens. It was individualism taken to the extreme.
One of the themes running through the novels is the induvial versus the collective. Asimov sees the collective as a force for good, a net positive for the galaxy. I used to agree. Now I'm not so sure. It could be that a collective mind would take the worst of it and weld it with all the force of our collective will behind it.
Anyhow, I would like to think, and rather really do want to think, that nature is working as a whole, that nature has a sort of consciousness, perhaps even a self-awareness, but I see no evidence of this. There is nothing aware about nature, even with in its individual systems. In this sense, nature is at our mercy.
This would lead to a much larger conversation about determinism, free will, and all that rot. Did you touch on determinism in your philosophy class?
Rot determinism. It's a false problem.
Answer is simple. The past was absolutely determined. The future is absolutely free and unpredictable (in the sense that Pi is unpredictable)
Ellington said this about good music. If it sounds good, it is good.
If you feel free, you are free.
God damn I love it when you get rolling with the written word.
We agree of course, we are just playing fast and loose with our definitions.
We are nature's self awareness. We are her octopus arms. We are her moral appendages figuring it out and doing the sacrificial hard work for her.
We will never be happy until we acknowledge that the game was never about us being happy in the first place.
We are sacrificial agents playing a role in helping her figure herself out.
To the degree I am optimistic...that is what I am optimistic about.
Ha! Dear Jed and Rebecca
Keep going! There is a book in this! I will call it "The Dialogues" - unless Plato still holds the copyright on that....
Another clear blue sky day dawning here in Oz. I'm a long way from San Fran and Chattanooga - but I feel close to you, my friends...
xxx
Dave :)
Oh David, gorgeous. I hung on every single word. Years ago I bought a teeny tiny little ceramic pot at an art studio and on it there are two images: a tree stump and beside it a huckleberry growing out of the stump (as they do). And the artist inscribed these words: "It'll be OK when we are gone." Your poem made me think of it, both healing in such a transcendent way. Thank you. I love your work. I love the perspective of deep time. I loved "stabs of birdsong" and "In dying/ushering in the new -/all the old voices returning." For which I thank you utterly.
Good morning from across the world, dear Stephanie. I write because.... I just need to, I think - the way a bird needs to sing - but I do also write to communicate.
Of course - choosing to write is something that is entirely within my control, but whether other people will read what I write, and whether they will find it meaningful..... those things are not within my control at all. A writer - or an artist or musician - we send our work out into the world and then people make of it what they will. We hope it will have meaning for someone else, but hope is all we have.
So sitting here in my early morning, with the mist rising over the river outside, your wonderful comment has moved me deeply. I could not reply at first - so I dipped into your own writing again and by chance the first thing I opened was your "Choosing Creation" post, which I had somehow previously missed. https://substack.com/@treespeech/p-165723289
I think the two pieces - my poem and your essay - share much in common.
Enormous thanks, Stephanie, for your profoundly thoughtful comment.
Very Best Wishes
Dave :)
I simply adore how you put it, Dave...that you write as a bird needs to sing. Never knowing who will hear it or how it will be received, but always with the hope that it makes some kind of cosmic difference because its source is true. Love the image of you reading and commenting as the mist lifts off the river. Ahhhh!
Thank you for seeking beyond the headlines into a deeper framework for living. I agree that your poem and my essay share much in common, both seeking a widening lens on the travails (and beauties!!) of the modern day.
Best wishes in return and so honored to be a reader here.
💀
Hi Peyton
Not too grim, I hope.
Also - thank you for the restack!
Best wishes from Oz
Dave :)
Hi David
No, not too grim.
Just grim enough 💀
I appreciated the perspective of this piece quite a bit and was smitten by the beauty. Love:
“space and
time and silence for
stabs of birdsong…”
And the mention of electrons flowing and “ …this poem will flare one last brief bright moment…”
The only way to comment, I felt, was as bones or ash or a whispering wind, “…old voices returning…”
But there are only certain old voices with emoji approximations.
Oooo... well you certainly intuited what I was trying to say. The risk - and joy - of language, is that it is imprecise and subject to such wide ranges of interpretation.
"bones or ash or a whispering wind..." - your words are a perfect match to my poem.
We live in complicated times. So much beauty. So much much horror too. I remain optimistic - because most people are capable of love and cooperative effort - but as a society we need to get better at both....
Best Wishes to you - Dave :)
Oooh yes! As a fellow lover of dystopian films and books but the same desire to not experience it (lol) I loved this poem and your rhyme and reason around its form etc. very cool, very clever!!
Hi dear Alex
Thank you! Like you, my brain bops around in all kinds of directions. I enjoyed writing this - but was unsure if it would make sense to anyone else!
Best Wishes - Dave :)
You captured this so well. The end, seems to be in the human consciousness.
Thank you my friend.
Yes... It certainly is a recurrent theme for us. I suspect this is an inherent consequence of self aware cognition and empathy. Once we understand our own mortality it is a natural step to contemplate the mortality of the entire species.
Best Wishes - Dave :)
🙏🏻💗
Imagine what a world it would be without all the carbon and nitrogen oxides. Without the petroleum. Without the fumes. And without the aerosol sprays. What a blue, blue sky it would be. All patched up. I think the earth cannot wait to get rid of us 'clever' monkeys.
oh yes, my friend, oh yes......
D :)
"this poem will flare
one last brief bright moment
then disappear for ever, utterly,"
Isn't it the same with us, my dear friend? We flare for one brief moment, and then we forever disappear.
Let that one brief moment be light.
Best wishes,
Mahdi
Yes, my friend. That is so true....
Keep burning! You shed a beautiful light.
Best Wishes - Dave :)
Birdsong and trees, ahhh. I think I’ll go for a hike and try not to disturb the birdsong and trees. 💛💛
Yes! I do a lot of hiking alone, for that reason.... and to let my own thoughts settle, and clarify...
Best Wishes - Dave
Same 🙂
Definitely a destructive, expendable species...the effects of climate change will be massive, humans may not survive but new life will emerge and the earth will heal...you're right, the earth will be better off for it!
What a day this will be.
Hey Dave,
Another genius poem from my favourite poet, thank you for sharing. I’m still wrapping my head around the whole poem intended for the post apocalypse period when it won’t be seen because we might not be here but if we are we won’t have the tech to be able to access it.
I’ve been having weird dreams lately, I’m starting to think you might be responsible 😂
Sending best wishes from a cold and snowy North Yorkshire,
Dave (UK Version)
Thanks my friend.
I had to do something with that photo.
Now I have to work out what to do with all my other abandoned car wreck photos.....
As for the strange dreams - I'm having them too. It must be something abut 2026....
Best Wishes - Aussie Dave :)