They are often found amongst others unlike themselves, of darker greens and sloped branches that can withstand the weight of snow when it falls
They coalesce even in conditions inhospitable
Even when all has withered their skin can breathe the light, with pores
porous and made for exchange
So they grow still, even after the canopy is bare
They are much like others of their kind but special are their petioles (their little petit feet) which let them waver like a shiver in the transparent fluidity of air.
supple and so prone to this warp and weft in the sky
limber and resilient
with a certain timbre to their sway
They grow together in droves, in self-made colonies that feed, and feed from, the ground where roots spread out
symbiotic nourishment
entangled with each other
suckling through rhizomatic roots
that grow as and into the horizontal
budding adventitiously and so ancient and long-lived
Standing like a series of capital I’s, their seeming singularity belies the intertwinement that scaffolds them from below
Burrowing across and making layers of an abundant understory, even the fire will not wipe them out, for they are protected as and by their thicket underground
New sprouts will appear and the burned and barren landscape will foster saplings that will swallow again and stretch
They set down anchors, interlocking anchors, whether or not on solid ground
All resistance and refusal and regeneration from below
The leaves were once placed in graves to protect the dead on the routes they might take
Emblems of protection, it was said Persephone tended them in a grove, biding time from eating seeds before the fruits to harvest could be brought forth again
With their shivering leaves, they were thought to communicate with other worlds, listening to and speaking of what they heard from afar
the whirr of those leaves in the wind thought a whisper bringing news from ancestors and giving rise to the lyric of language and poetry
To place the leaf under your tongue, it was thought, would impart eloquence
perhaps to undulate rather than enunciate in order to articulate otherwise
A letter in the alphabet of Ogham, those ancient marks made on stones that stand still
another rhythm, a nuanced cadence that warrants listening will altered ears
On another continent they are named for their trembling, their quaking
of the earth it might split open
but of a body it might be dancing
not shivering but whispering
not a tremble but a twirl
not shaking but shielding
an open shelter along the way
brimming and buttressed
whether or not seen
They once were but are no longer of the grave
now of the grove
simultaneously above below
kept on the move but forging still from, and for, the roots
circle round and add the o
and in or out of step
we’ll find a groove
and on we go
—
Part of the Art Writing 2019-20 contribution to 12-Hour Non-State Parade International Symposium, Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee, Saturday 30 November 2019, 11am – 11pm.