The Canopy Edge

So many canopy edges, physiological and spiritual, here on Turning Island where I am a guest of my friend Penny. She has been coming here for forty years. Here are two poems from paradise. * Low tide. Listless inlet. Uncovered underbelly of rocks. Fading stones. Forgotten crayfish. Finger of water. Glistening trickle. Slow release of gray to colour. Sand shimmering. Tide returning. * First light, not even really light, dissipated shades. Bent tops of trees, a run of eighth notes, three stars in a vertical line, their music. More light and loons. The stars shifting. Trees now a tangled riot of lines. The lagoon revealed: sounds of a diving creature, towing the reflected moon. Now pink amid the branches. Stars defying azure wave The North Star, especially resistant. Loons again. Reveille. Insects on cue. Orange burst: the overturned canoe declares itself asleep on a slope. Now sparks. Now fiery light. Now heavens and earth, begun ...

In his book, Berlin Childhood Around 1900 , Walter Benjamin brings together a fragmented series of images and memories that for him evoke the lost and treasured happiness he had as a young boy. The adult writer had a dream of 'mapping' his life through these memories, by associating them with very specific places in the city. The first chapter of the book talks about the beauty of courtyards, noticing the life given to them by trees as focal points of activity. The rest of the book uses other objects and souvenirs as flashpoints for thinking about his family, his city, and memory in general. What is implicit is the understanding that how we see the events of our lives -- changes, according not only to who we are speaking to, but also reflecting what has surfaced or evolved about the remembered events over time. Objects, photos and other souvenirs help to tell the tale. I've been thinking about this recently, and especially that first chapter of Benjamin's book, while...

Hello and welcome. For a while now, I have been wanting to make a site that could act as a place where I could be more disciplined about writing. Hopefully, in coming days, you will see reflections, poetry and reviews that I might have posted on other social media. I have been searching a space where I might experiment with ideas and forms and strike out in new directions. The 'canopy edge' is a botanical term for the highest point of a forest, and/or where the forest means a gap or a new habitat. My favourite form of botanical 'edge' is when leafy trees come near to touching the surface of water bodies. The space between the water and the nearest leafy stem seems to shimmer and vibrate with the possible connection. The not-quite-touching is significant for me, and represents an equilibrium -- a compatible connection framed by the tension of opposites, a yearning across the smallest of gaps. I love the Celtic idea of 'shimmering', when divine energy radiat...