A Poetry Collection
by Zoë Porter-Parsons
this one web
‘Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another.’ - Leibniz
‘I choose my life, choose to be woven / in other lives, and weave my own / threads in a fabric of such weight / it pulls flesh earthward, yet can lift / a breathing animal to swift / flight from the miseries of fate.’ - Littoral, Gwen Harwood, 1968
I watch an orb weave
silver into the fabric
of the night; spin the
thread which binds us
to create order
in a world of entropic
disarray is a little thing
that is everything
they say the fibre
of a spider’s web
can stop bullets,
make armour
funny how strength
is fragile, slashed by
droplets in the down-
pour that never ceases
the moon moves in a
slow arc, primordial
pendulum across the sky
hangs by thread
does the male self-
actualize when the female
consumes him? widows
herself
or is he like a phoenix?
reborn from the
sacrificial ashes
into kin
kin who go on to
create webs and
maintain the natural
order of things
little body plays join-
the-dots with stars,
divine impetus to write
the cosmic plan
in wind the web
chatters its teeth
a chord struck vibrates
through the night
oh! hide away!
arachnid heart / grain
of sand, hide away!
from the miseries of fate
in quiet awe, I watch
the resolve to weave
oneself into the fabric
of this world: this one
tapestry
To Return
(for Thea)
‘I thought the earth remembered me, she / took me back so tenderly, arranging her / dark skirts, her pockets / full of lichens and seeds.’ - Sleeping in the Forest, Mary Oliver
She ate mushrooms
for days,
(four days!?)
to attain
enlightenment? I ask,
in dis-
belief (half as a joke/ half to see
if it worked)
to return,
she said,
but the jigsaw didn’t come
with a picture of its whole:
fragments held
in shaky hands
I bet it’s hard,
I say,
To put the pieces back
together
(and we both know I
don’t mean the puzzle)
A few months ago
(not that time means much)
she made me a skirt
(with pockets full of lichens
and seeds)
and explained it has no label:
no ownership
sent to her grandmothers
house
not even mother of
mother could
tether her
to this soil:
roots in umbilical cords
severed.
sever (v.)
c. 1300, from Anglo-French severer,
Old French sevrer "to separate"
(12c., later in French restricted to
"to wean," i.e. "to separare
from the mother")
so, when she said
I broke
into a house,
smashed a
clock,
put it in the freezer….
it made sense
(as much as these things can)
We were so worried.
I’m glad you called.
As long as you’re okay.
I am now. (but are you?)
& then what happened?
I played the piano
(in the broken-into-house)
and cried and cried and
sirens took me
away.
Oh darling.
Soul too sensitive
for this world,
we all have a slippery
grip.
One who comes from
the earth
now
she writes poetry
in a room
of soft edges
I love you,
we say,
(as sisters do)
I was returning,
she says.
I know,
I reply. We all are.
The earth remembered me.
A whisper,
The earth remembered me.
Makarrata
Brolgas stitch together
the horizon
wings outstretch in
Wominjeka /
welcome
There is an emu in the
sky: dhinawan
pieces of this galaxy in all of us
and memory, ancient,
unfurls like incense
Galarruwuy Yunupingu
describes yothu yindi
as balance
wholeness
completeness
‘A world designed in perfection,
founded on the beautiful simplicity
of a mother and her newborn child.’
thirty years since Mabo.
golden soil and wealth for toil
fallacy laughs in the face
of justice,
teeth bared and blood-red
saltwater meets freshwater
in the estuary
with courage let us all combine
across water and time
we move to ascend
and embrace:
Makarrata
Turritopsis dohrrnii
There is a being
made of glass
who floats through the under-
world,
and has-done
since time / space
immemorial
Spinoza says that evil is an
absence,
Plato says the soul is a
Form of Life
(it can never die)
transparency is not an
object
is death?
the ocean is a
metaphor for all that is
too big to understand
tides of time
do not sway you,
immortal creature
fitting
you find yourself here
floating in the fresh
anarchy of the dark
The Hen
“The notion that man must dominate nature emerges directly from the domination of man by man… Just as men are converted into commodities, so every aspect of nature is converted into a commodity, a resource to be manufactured and merchandised wantonly. … The plundering of the human spirit by the marketplace is paralleled by the plundering of the earth by capital.” - Murray Bookchin
The morning is cruel and bare
mist unfurls into the valley
a mother calls out
laments to the rising sun
ignorance listens but
cannot hear
hearts drenched in silicon
insulated
The Hen must run from fate
legs fight a weight imposed
wings once liberation, vestigial.
Doused in oil feathers curl
up & in smoke she flies
fickle pleasure, momentary
usurps life itself
flesh incinerates the
hypocrites’ tongue
one day, we will wake
from this perpetual winter
rise like steam through the valley
and we will be sorry
bookmark
my mother brings me a leaf.
it is speckled,
like her sun-dappled skin
I use it between pages
a place to return to tomorrow
(because hope is)
grasp slippery
or is reality (spine stroked by
icy fingers) &
autumn is upon us
footsteps (one infront of the other)
through leaves and frost,
one misstep fatal
to lose one’s page
yellow leaves wither and
flutter like footprints:
pages in a breeze
The Anatomy of Trees
A human can bleed to death
in less than five minutes
to suspend dust in amber
takes two (to ten) million years
xylem:
specialised vascular tissue
transports water & nutrients
from plant–soil interface
provides support
I’ve heard stories of rings
three-thousand deep
their sap turns to stone
as wise beings weep
phloem: (flow-em)
specialised vascular tissue
conducts material
from leaves to roots,
provides strength
a wise man once said ‘look deep
into nature and you will understand’
Philip Larkin, one of all men, replied:
‘This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.’
perverse metaphysics of time,
and time, again
understand. reduced to an other
stumped by collective amnesia
philosophers cannot hold you
cut on severed edges
five litres of blood
circulate the human body
millions of mycorrhizae:
a symbiotic relationship
between fungi and plants,
an exchange.
& how
plants communicate
in a teaspoon of soil
ecologists trip over roots reduced
to dirt, the blind cannot quantify
under the microscope are synonyms
of blood:
family, kinship, lineage, ancestry
in lost language we lose you
origins bleed dry
To Return is a collection of poems which speaks to the philosophical movements of deep ecology and eco-anarchism, admonishing anthropocentrism and hierarchy. Connection to earth’s wild places is deeply spiritual and innate, so a natural sense of awe and wonder permeate my prose. Fritjof Capra describes this movement:
Deep ecology is rooted in a perception of reality that goes beyond the scientific framework to an intuitive awareness of the oneness of all life… the individual feels connected to the cosmos as a whole…it becomes clear that ecological awareness is truly spiritual.
As the title of the collection suggests, the body of work is an attempt ‘To Return’ to nature, our fundamental origins. In the small detail of a spider spinning its web lies this lyrical and profound truth; everything is deeply interconnected. Our commodity economy has extracted and placed humans above the natural world, or the ‘other’, allowing wanton exploitation under our many systems of oppression. I attempt to dissolve the systems which bind us and reach for the inherent oneness of ‘this one / tapestry’.
Mary Oliver’s sentiment, ‘I thought the earth remembered me, she / took me back so tenderly’ , in To Return, speaks to a universal and deep-seated desire to connect with our selves through nature, to come closer to understanding.
Motherhood is a recurring motif, drawing and building upon the clichéd personification of ‘mother earth’. Earth comes to life as relative, roots and the one who birthed us all; ‘sever(v.) …i.e. to separate from the mother’, ‘a mother calls out/ laments to the rising sun’. The poems tap into themes of belonging, awe, roots and ecocentrism. In the words of social ecologist Murray Bookchin, “We are part of nature, a product of a long evolutionary journey… we carry the ancient oceans in our blood. …” . This connection and deep ecological perspective is the thread binding together each of the poems, as it binds all life and all matter.
The need for nature writing which does not romanticise nature under an imperial/ capitalist/ patriarchal lens is more pressing than ever, with the sixth mass extinction, and ecological and climate crises, upon us. This amalgam weaves together many spiritual, literary and personal learnings of recent, bringing harmony and greater depth to my studies in Philosophy and Ecology through poetry, which is, in itself, a greater understanding.