Tree Lung

Tree Lung

On the occasion of student artist Rachel Bultje’s installation, “Breath of Life” at Chatham Kent Secondary School (June 14, 2016)

I am what’s left of the Orange Osage and Ash,

their remains lie with me now,

post execution of their roots so

that passers-by won’t slip on a

falling fruit.

I am a museum exhibit of the extinct

Protectors of our health. Each

carefully manufactured leaf, once

healed 2,000 lungs

diseased with asthma, viruses,

exposure to the worst sort of

world.

These limbs used to sway free,

filtering the oily toxins from

their families below, releasing

the diamond-clear air of life.

Now they are bound in this cage

crinoline, as an example:

‘What not to do’

‘What has been done’.

Glass Birth at the Glass Academy

Glass Birth

Inside the oven’s core

awaits molten sand and

cullet, broken shards that

have long since lost their

lives and returned to an ash of

soda and lime, gametes ready

for mitosis

at 2,200°.

Jason, like Gepetto before him,

gently gathers a gob of swirling

zygote, like honey on the end of

a wand, turning to keep it latched.

He dips it into a petit bundt

mould, giving it edges, a core

of ridges to form a heart

and life.

Colours are added from the sulphides

and oxides of the Earth: blue

from the cobalt, sun yellow from

the cadmium, and a red of

Mesopotania’s ancient gold

chloride.

Jason’s gaffer pinches the ends,

pulls the soft swirls forward,

turning creation at the glory hole

to add radiant layers of a shiny

new epidermis. He strokes the

newborn head, limbs,

coaching it to reveal its own

unique

character.

Once gestated, iron scissors,

clamp and pull at her base,

water is added as the anti-

element, creating

stress.  Cut from her

maker, her annealing

convalence into

the world

begins again.

I'm Growing Things

I’m growing things. A baby and vegetables,

taking root in the deep soil of

my womb, spreading small

fingers and fragile golden

hair to the boundary of their

containment.

I’m growing things. A baby and vegetables:

first, a wee heart of hemp,

cultivated beet by beet with the

sweet liquid of the sun.

Innate food of the earth seeping into

small passageways to

transfigure the seed into

lungs of leek, and carrot-coloured

kidneys, tiny turnip

branches of our family,

pushing forth into light and

waiflike pathways.

I’m growing things.