{"id":11005,"date":"2012-06-01T10:47:20","date_gmt":"2012-06-01T14:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=11005"},"modified":"2012-06-01T11:47:08","modified_gmt":"2012-06-01T15:47:08","slug":"natural-wonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/natural-wonder\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural Wonder"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Obviously, this displays the global distribution of…
\n<\/em>something. But what? See the note<\/a> at the foot of this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state.\u00a0No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Joseph Conrad)<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Kingdom<\/strong><\/p>\n

At times
\nthe heart
\nstands back
\nand looks at the body,
\nlooks at the mind,
\nas a lion
\nquietly looks
\nat the not-quite-itself,
\nnot-quite-another,
\nmoving of shadows and grass.<\/p>\n

Wary, but with interest,
\nconsiders its kingdom.<\/p>\n

Then seeing
\nall that will be,
\nheart once again enters —
\nenters hunger, enters sorrow,
\nenters finally losing it all.
\nTo know, if nothing else,
\nwhat it once owned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jane Hirshfield)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Flight<\/strong><\/p>\n

Osseous, aqueous, cardiac, hepatic—
\nback from bone the echoes stroke, back
\nfrom the halved heart, the lungs
\nthree years of weightlessness have cinched to gills.
\nFrom a leather chaise, the astronaut’s withered legs
\ndangle, as back they come, sounds
\na beaked percussion hammer startles into shape.
\nThe physician cocks his head and taps — exactly
\nas a splitter halves his slate, the metamorphic rock
\nchisel-shocked, then shocked again, halved<\/p>\n

and halved, until a roof appears, black as space.
\nI’m gaining ground, he says, the astronaut,
\nwho knows, from space, earth is just a blue-green glow,
\na pilot light he circled once, lifted, swiftly flown
\nabove the rafters and atmospheres, half himself
\nand half again some metamorphic click,
\nextinct as memory. I’m gaining ground,
\nhe says, and back it comes, his glint
\nof cloud-crossed world: a pilot light
\nor swaddled leaf, green in the season’s infancy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Linda Bierds [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Lively writing about science and nature depends less on the offering of good answers, I think, than on the offering of good questions.<\/p>\n

My own taste runs toward such as What are the redeeming merits, if any, of the mosquito?<\/em>\u00a0Or Why is the act of sex invariably fatal for some species of salmon?<\/em>\u00a0Or Are crows too intelligent for their station in life?<\/em> Why do certain bamboo species wait 120 years before bursting into bloom?<\/em> How do seals stay<\/em>\u00a0cool in the Arctic?<\/em> Does a termite colony constitute many little animals or one big one?<\/em>\u00a0Or, perhaps best of all, Why are thre so many different species of beetle?<\/em><\/p>\n[…]\n

Within that basic pattern [among 300,000 beetle species] there is an unimaginable variety of shapes and colors and life strategies — vicious pinchers and rhinoceros horns on the head, anteater snouts, antennae like the most elaborate TV aerial, snapping hinges between thorax and abdomen that allow certain species to turn somersaults, light fixtures for signaling mates after dark, beetles as small as a sesame seed, beetles as large as a mouse, long scrawny beetles and husky broad-shouldered ones, leaf-eaters and fungus-eaters and meat-eaters, some that live underwater in rivers, some that burrow subway tunnels along the cambium layer of trees, some that gather and roll huge Sisyphean balls of dung… Why, then, are there so cotton-pickin’ many species of Coleoptera? Why 300,000 variations?<\/p>\n

I don’t know. I don’t know of anyone who knows.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(David Quammen [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Mystery Squid<\/strong><\/p>\n

They say it lives miles down
\nin that wet obsidian
\nwe crawled from, below
\nMartini’s Law<\/a>, down where
\nthings, if they can, create
\ntheir own light.
\nAll we know<\/span>
\nof its country is an accurate
\nreading of our own ignorance,
\nbut in photographs that thing
\nlooks like a blown-back
\numbrella, handle and spokes,
\nfabric gone, until we
\nrecall it’s twenty feet long,<\/p>\n

the size of a tree uprooted and
\ndrifting sidewise where
\npressure of depth
\nhas exacted stringency,
\nand its arms like ten sticky
\nbranches trap prizes<\/p>\n

yet to be named, blinks
\nand inklings, articulated wisps,
\neclectic pulsings, a magpie
\nhoard where no magpie
\ncan live, rhythms fleshed out,
\ntidbits on which this living
\nGiacometti thrives.<\/p>\n

Where it moves with random
\ntail-lights toward memory’s
\nsubmarine canyons, our loneliness
\nis as much without meaning
\nas silence, our disbelief is only
\nthe self-saving doubt of a fieldhand
\nwitnessing a space shot: “That thing
\nain’t going to no moon.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Brendan Galvin [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

New Cop<\/strong><\/p>\n

He is waxed and polished, as streamlined
\nfrom crewcut to steel toes
\nas this new cruiser my taxes bought him.<\/p>\n

If he’s Before, then I’m After,
\ncreased and spindled in all the wrong places,
\nwhat he could become,
\nthough I doubt he can imagine
\nletting his shirttail hang out like this
\nto indicate it’s one of his better days,<\/p>\n

or growing a white beard until
\nit turns flyaway and his wife-cut hair
\nfreaks whitely from an Orioles cap
\nas if at the first
\ntingle from Old Sparky.<\/p>\n

Should I excuse myself by telling him
\nhow I have to exercise this left hip joint,
\nor say I’ve been jogging
\nand walking this road right here for
\na third of a century, so have a claim on it?<\/p>\n

Who is this kid, anyway? Nobody
\nI’ve ever seen in this town of 1,500.
\nIt’s suddenly damp and foggy,
\nand I’m feeling muskrat shaggy
\nand a little bagged off, like I just crawled
\nout of that marsh down there.<\/p>\n

Are you a Baltimore fan? he asks.
\nNo, I’m an oriole fan, I say,
\nthe wrong answer because I can see
\nit’s scrambling his gestalt<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Not a good day for a walk, he says,
\nwatching the eyes behind my bifocals
\nfor the Vacancy sign, waiting
\nfor me to ask when the Pope’s
\ngoing to get here with my tuna sandwich.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Brendan Galvin [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

The story of Into the Wild<\/em><\/a>, published in 1996, pretty much covers all the bases on the subject of natural wonder. Here’s Eddie Vedder, with the official video for “Hard Sun” (from the soundtrack to the Sean Penn-directed 2007 film version):<\/p>\n