Walking Talking Poem for My Daughter

Walking Talking Poem

Got to get it written down-- the poem, a version, for this poem only exists in air...

this poem is not meant to be memorized; instead, spontaneous elaboration as the occasion permits... this poem is not fixed, this poem is a transcription of that which already exists... in the air... outside... all around.

around the cul-de-sac, while walking, while talking, looking, seeing breathing stepping, no stopping, naming, explaining, all things, things, things, more things

around us, all the time, not separate, not apart... daughter: remember this.

***

See the trees? Lining the road, turning colors, some losing leaves, some not...

You see the trees, but only half so much is true: underneath the ground, subterranean root systems; mirrored perhaps to the branches that reach out above, a great root system runs under the ground of each tree, drinking water, holding steady, steady.

We see half of each tree at once, and so we cannot rely solely on what we see to determine what there is all around us...

You see the tree "breathes" carbon dioxide and expels oxygen as waste. You see this is the inverse of us-- we breathe oxygen and expel carbon dioxide as waste. You see this might be considered a symbiotic relationship. You see how nothing exists independently of anything else.

The living trees, through the absorption of carbon dioxide and water and sunlight, create, in a sense, oxygen, through a process called photosynthesis. Though nothing is ever created, and nothing is ever destroyed. 

You see, everything is made of atoms. Atoms, you cannot see, for they are too small. But everything is atoms.

And so I find it fascinating that the trees, soaking up sunlight and water and carbon dioxide process this -- this process called photosynthesis-- and they photosynthesize oxygen, which, conveniently for us, we need to breathe to live.

We need to breathe to live.

So you see these trees standing still and tall and processing and thereby providing us with life, they aren't just fun to look at, but serve a purpose.

And perhaps you serve a purpose too: breathing, so the trees can breathe, too.

And maybe you might imagine a carbon dioxide atom being absorbed and processed and transformed by this tree, these trees, all trees, and being reborn as oxygen.

This "death" and "destruction" of the carbon dioxide atom is the "birth" and "creation" of the oxygen atom. But nothing is ever created, and nothing is ever destroyed.

In fact, atoms make up carbon dioxide, atoms make up oxygen, atoms make up water, atoms make up sunlight. So it is of course not the "creation/destruction" of "one" atom, but of several atoms, coming together as something else. Which is in and of itself a processing of atoms into another form by atoms of another form: atoms processing.

You'll never find a part of the world in which atoms are not processing. We might just call this "change."

And some trees change color and drop their leaves, and some do not, and the trees that do not are called "evergreen," for rather logical reasons.

You know you are made of atoms? This stroller? This macadam? 

***

You know the sunlight is made of atoms? And speaking of the sun, the star in the sky, do you know you can see it even with your back to it? Because the sun lights up everything we see, thereby in everything we can see the sun.