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Davina E Solomon Jun 2021
She's risen coarse on rusted tracks,
through sandy loam, a summer sheen.
Rainbows are but colour barracks,
fair violet, through verdant green.

Through sandy loam, a summer sheen
sparked exile of Fall's fleeting mist.
Fair violet, through verdant green,
adds tint to sun in pigment grist.

Exile sparked in Fall's fleeting mist,
cleared light, silky ivory.
Adds tint to sun in pigment grist,
silhouette of this noble tree.

Cleared light, silky ivory
are petals cast in modest mould.
Silhouette of this noble tree,
tattered leaves, raging wind unfold.

Petals cast in a modest mould
are magi of summer solstice.
Tattered leaves, raging wind unfold
simply envy of breezy fleece.

Magi of the summer solstice,
Purple blush on sun dipped petals.
Raging envy of breezy fleece,
Scalding wind that scarcely settles.

Purple blush on sun dipped petals
Rainbows are but colour barracks.
Scalding wind that scarcely settles,
she rises coarse on rusted tracks.
Read the entire text at:
davinasolomon.org/2021/06/03/across-a-rainbow-of-hardiness-a-botanical-pantoum-for-the-bigleaf-magnolia-along-the-highline/
Davina E Solomon Apr 2021
A lonesome threshold,
yesterday was light as confetti / from a wedding that
bled in thirty litres of martyred roses / How long are
three hundred steps from a church, to stucco walls
the colour of sorrow?

Soil, the tint of blood,
ichor of mountain Gods, deveined for lost embrace
of roots / Wind whistling away regrets in the dust of
liberated souls / Would it sing for her, embalmed
in the bowels of earth’s sanguine hum?

April heat, weighted with a dirge
of tears salted in ocean / rusting the trumpet
and violin strings / Who will tune the piano for mass,
now that those musical men sailed before her,
in paper boat memoirs?

The Goliath tree rooted in bones,
a giant on such sustenance / gatekeeper of souls
tethered to fleshy sinews in beds of solitude /
Will she be interred in fruit, as he suppers
on her animated putrefaction?

Suffering, twice a child,
once a lady, she didn’t stay long to be swaddled
in linens of pity, cottons of commiserations /
Where will I store the enameled chamber *** for
when I grow up to be her likeness?

Nightshades, funneling viscous memories,
trumpeting in a pastel wilderness, alkaloid racket
waiting to sound in the poisons of prayerful echoes /
When will they bloom, toxic with grief of a swelling past,
so I may sleep as soundly as her?
Inspired by death in my village, remembering my grandmother ...
Davina E Solomon Jun 2021
In Parsley, a Levantine munificence accreted together in Tabbouleh,
herbage that covers fractured bedrock in a poultice of healing.

Secreted within, lie igneous outpourings of bloodied tomatoes,
those solid affections that had welled through an ocean floor

as Neptune quelled Gaia's contractions, her waters seeking to burst
beneath the wrinkled surface of a salty sea. She, an underbelly of sky,
  
pregnant in the overwhelm of magma, sweating out her heart in fire,
muted like a moon of Neptune, in his retrograde soliloquies, yet mirroring

hers in icy resurfacings of skin. The God of the Sea,  boils an amnion  
to hazy mists, how deep will his trident plunge to dislodge those Trojan ships

of deceptions ? Yet, Triton blows a conch for Gaia, not for man's duelling
and his warring tribes. He soothes her feverish gnashing of thighs

labouring continents. Some fires burn in water, like desultory heartbeats
moving the pace of rocks through the ocean floor, spiriting away

to stranger places still, marking maps of memories in the beauty of
a stillborn magma. The limestone they say is no blood relation to such

alien fructification, those oceanic intruders, bleeding still, spilling
secrets in reds and purples. The acid tears spilled in lemons merely

neutralised in syllables, sedimented to a community of  limestone,
that possess no archaic remnants reminiscing through dead bones,

an age of glory. Now beauty lies in herbage over once raucous magma
and traces of a salty sea, freshness of life trailing her veins, in fragrance of Parsley
This poem was written in a way to thread together themes of Roman myths, the moon of Neptune and NASA's proposed Trident mission to Triton, the Jonestown/Lebanon County Volcanic field and a levantine salad. It is specifically based on the Geology of the volcanic field ara located in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Do read the synthesis of it all at davinasolomon.org/2021/06/21/a-levantine-myth/
Davina E Solomon Mar 2021
Off the shoulder of Orion onto the arm of Perseus / in sentient skin sheathing the tingle of nerves / a mortal hunger for a view of the galaxy broader than the Milky Way / an awakened pulse in a soulless being / stronger, brighter, speedier, warrior / yet now, wiser / lover / beloved / thirsting for life / unafraid of who he is / never hidden in the arrow flailing off the arm of the Archer / a philosophical spiraling through a riot of 200 billion stars / looking inwards to what he may become //
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It was the existential philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) who described authenticity as choosing the nature of one’s existence and identity. He linked the concept of authenticity to an awareness of our mortality, positing that only in keeping in view the inevitability of death can one lead a truly authentic life.

Heidegger, Sartre and Camus among others have all discussed and debated the idea of authenticity, free will, freedom of action being a path to self realization etc. I enjoy the thoughts of these erudite thinkers and it brought to mind the most moving death speech ever recorded in cinematic history, that of the replicant Roy Batty from Ridley Scott’s ‘Blade Runner’ (1982). It is supremely poetic and for a replicant who tried in the course of the film, to find the meaning of his life and a way to increase his lifespan, it is filled with reflection in an awareness of an authentic self and a regret in his imminent mortality. The 42 word monologue what Rutger Hauer (who plays Roy) delivered after he had his way with the original version.

Tears in the Rain

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die’.

I have enjoyed the idea of the search for a meaning of life by AI that lack human consciousness. It’s a beautiful riveting moment in the film where the empathy one feels for someone striving to be human is much more than one would feel for detective Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford), who projects himself throughout the movie as less human and more of a replicant. What is authenticity? For an observer, it would be Roy Batty’s deathbed regret of not having lived to the potential he assumed he had if his lifespan were extended. It is the pain of losing his lover in the course of the film, the opportunity and the ability to show compassion to an assassin like Deckard, the hope of learning to be sentient, an escape from slavery of AI. This movie is quite a treat for the understated screenplay, the poignant moments, the inherent philosophical questions that arise. This poem is my tribute to Roy Batty who I believe, appears more human than a human would strive to be.
Note: Although the movie Blade Runner, catapulted to cult status and Tannhäuser Gate, C-beams are Sci-Fi vocabulary, Tannhäuser is in fact an 1845 opera in three acts by Richard Wagner, based on a German legends, Tannhäuser, the mythologized medieval German Minnesänger and poet. The poet spends his time alternately worshipping Venus and all things Venusian and then feeling remorse for his sins, perhaps battling with his own feelings of authenticity.

A further insight into deathbed regrets:

In the little systematic research done on the dying, Bronnie Ware’s book, ‘Regrets of the Dying’ recorded that family, relationships and authenticity matter most to the dying. An interesting essay I read this morning on the deathbed perspective, (which prompted me to look into issues of authenticity in the first place), author Neil Levy wonders if deathbed regrets are epistemically privileged and cites American philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel who provides two reasons why we should be careful about giving them undue significance. Firstly, he says, the dying might be subject to hindsight bias and secondly the dying escape the consequences of their own advice.

Levy also observes that the death bed regret is a view from the perspective of someone who is gripped by a simpler set of commitments and to quote him, ” for whom simpler pleasures – those that can be realized immediately, or come to fruition relatively quickly – retain their grip, but for whom broader commitments are absurd. The view from the deathbed comes as close as is humanly possible (for those who aren’t deeply depressed) to abandoning the sets of commitments that give more extended projects meaning.” Some food for thought.
Davina E Solomon Sep 2021
Yesterday, a cloud burst in mythologies
and the rain fidgeted over the retreat

of a tidal pantheon; deities swept away
by a current, and we stood awhile, watching

the moon elbow out the dusk. Breathing
is burdensome when cars float on water

and corpses leak out of cavernous
basements. Every tablet, etched, in the cold

heart of building code was read again
and then again. It wasn't enough to blame

Aeolian whim or the raging riposte of Apollo,
now that we had marvelled away Gaia's

ozone skirt. Her amnion always leaked
in folkloric floods each time she birthed

a parable. She once asked Noah to build
an ark so he could ride her waves

and we scrape the sky to impale her
in shards where her womb is soft and yielding,

as we sour the air and burn the water and strip
her of her emerald sigh and melt her hills

and silt her wetlands. Mostly it was the asphalt
plastering her yearning that calcified her veins

and arteries, as she died slowly under our feet.
We could hardly fathom her sorrow for the tears

rolled off her torso like an oil slick
and rode far into the subway for sewers.
Hurricane Ida’s remnants created deadly havoc in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York days after the system hit the Gulf Coast — some 1,000 miles away (npr.org) I composed this poem in the aftermath. Read further at my blog. Originally published at http://davinasolomon.org on September 4, 2021.
Davina E Solomon Mar 2021
There it looms, a life like mountain/ sheathed in fynbos, all shades of green/ while the cape drags in reluctant seaweed/ and the wind makes contrails of my hair/

I ascend too with the heather, the rooibos and the hottentot/ We climb/ now a collective of exaggerated beauty/ defiant in wind, spray and fire/

There are leaves as prone as a flat lined heart/ reeds as resilient as a returning pulse/and we all watch the hope of yolk/ of a Sunday sun dipping into the ocean/promising to rise again/

We creep up the leeward and the windward/ ensconced in the spiral of a soul entropy/ determined to survive every rock and crevice/ to hoist ourselves up the flagpole of the cosmic plan/
I wove the Fynbos or the shrub vegetation of the Cape Floral Region (South Africa) in this poem dedicated to a resilient womanhood.
Davina E Solomon Mar 2021
Cornrows forge a rhythm to the sun
and self love feels like a line dance.
A shake of tassels and silks that
unfurl in the nick of time.

Love flowers on a stalk, above, below.
The wind sweeps in an airy betrothal,
a surge and then a sway, sashay,
a whirl in the nick of time.

Pollen, sparkles, pixel burst.
How do the ears of corn know,
to listen to the wind holler,
to twirl in the nick of time.

In a Caryopsis, a synopsis
of self seducing passions,
crushed to cornmeal. Floury
swirl in the nick of time.
The inspiration for this poem lay in a snippet of poetry that the wonderful actor, the late Irrfan Khan voices to a pomegranate plant in the movie Karwaan (Hindi). He say this to the sapling of Anarkali (pomegranate bud):

“They buried me alive thinking I’ll perish,
but they didn’t realise, that I’m a seed and in my burial, lay my redemption. My dear pomegranate bud, don’t be in a hurry to bloom and fruit. You will be taken to an expansive space where you can grow and flourish.”

The delicate instruction got me to think about seeds, progenitors of the future, buried and redeemed when they germinate. There are so many ways to create a seed. Love in the plant kingdom, if it can be called that, is as diverse as the plants that make up the flora of the world.

Today’s post is about corn rows in a field. Corn is a wind pollinated plant (male and female flowers occur on the same stalk and corn can self pollinate too). It would be interesting to note that the time of synchronous maturation of flowers on the stalk is termed colloquially, a nick. Tassels, silks, ears are all parts of corn flowers and Caryopsis, the fruit of the corn arranged on the cob, is a fruit body found in other varieties of grasses as well. So much for the botanical lesson for now.

On a separate note, it seems like ages when my mother braided my (then short) hair in cornrows which was unusual for my school days. It’s time consuming to braid hair thus, especially when extensions are involved (like I first saw people in Dar es Salaam wear them) hours of labour involved, but a wonderful way to wear hair nevertheless.

It was also in Dar that I danced a Kenyan style line dance that is a form of synchronized dancing where each person moves separately to rhythm. Do check the South African anthem Jerusalema that was put to this unbeatable step (to go viral online), by the Angolan dance troupe, Fenomenos de Semba (and if dancing with a plate of food is your kind of thing). The idea behind Line dancing is that it begets coexistence. I would like to imagine a kind of ‘Convivencia’, which resonates with the theme of corn love or a communal love dancing in a corn field, so to speak. (Although, Convivencia is used to denote the complex interplay of social, cultural and religious practices). We are still the same species despite the differences , like corn in a field.

Thank you for reading.
Davina E Solomon Aug 2021
Saying Grace

The day roped in happiness
like tidal waters
streaked with seaweed,
joyous to be afloat again.
The rocky inlet imbued
a stony demeanour, while
calmly contemplating
the resounding consonants
of a cavern within.
I could hear it swish syllables
as it lapped in the waves,
and I now channel
in gratitude,
that exuberant overflow,
and this,
which needs no rationale.
As we sit at a table,
enjoying a meal
cobbled together
from the sweet of corn,
the crunch of lettuce,
the ocean yield
of Piscean gleam,
it has begun to look
like Eden on a plate,
and I allow myself
to feel touched.
I am touched.
Gratitude is a verb
when I feel thankful
for being able to share
in the sacrificial generosity
of plants and animals.
Do we feel blessed?
We must,
for what could be sweeter
than that
we haven't been refused
- a share
of the Universal largesse.
From this bounty,
we take as we may,
so we simply survive
to another day.
It is wonderful to be alive
and I am grateful.
We are grateful.
https://davinasolomon.org/2021/08/03/eden-on-a-plate-a-prayer-before-meals/
Davina E Solomon Jun 2021
Sweet Angelica,
An overwhelm of your leafy
ramifications, waxed verdure
affections for a wayward wind.
My eyes caught the emerald glint;
now they glisten green
in a poetic apotheosis.

Should I deem you guilty
that 'twas the devil's walking stick
that sired you,
as virid envelope,
so delicate that every leaflet
would blend to a fine herb repast.

So I brave your prickly defences
in my manner of white tailed deer
and nibble of your leafy poetry.
A half mouthed curse that you sting
but your arbour rose
where none grew and I thought
you bloomed especially for me.

Rhizomes spiralled for life,
and the taste of muddied rain.
Other wanderers tried pillage
those jejune early fronds and
you recoiled in thorny armament,
a conflicted poetry I read on you.

Look at you now ...
largest leaf than any other in a North wind,
towering panicles that draw
a chorus of winged angels, quills.
These be the battlements of love
that will shed for life, in beauty

for when Summer leaves, there'll be Fall,
then the long rest of seasons.
I was struck by the leafy beauty of the Angelica tree which I came across at the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on the Virginia half of Assateague Island that we visited recently.
Read further at: davinasolomon.org/2021/06/15/for-angelica/

The trunk and petioles bear spines, a stem modification in defence from foragers, that makes it also quite deer resistant. The spines also gave it the common name of ‘devil’s walking stick’ or ‘prickly ash’.

Here below, is a botanical poem.
Davina E Solomon Apr 2021
Whispers I sent out to dawn latched
on to the solitary sun to trail
the arc of a common time
in a sky the hue of gold in grass.
The land leans on the baobab
in a dust storm of wheels and lenses.
Wheels and lenses.

When the dust settles, I will dust
my shuka and the goats will return
home, to comfort my eyes that flow
the spate of the Great Ruaha,
seeping secretly into the baobab
I have chores to do, a shuka to ****.
A shuka to ****.

Will they buy the beads I strung
as I rocked Naeku on my back,
to make circles of day and circles
of night, as wide as the baobab,
in the colour of clouds, the colour of sky.
There's colour to stars in a darkened night.
A darkened night.

Killeleshua is fragrant in thousand leaves
Am I not worth more than thirteen Zebu?
The watering hole was flecked in hippos
and the firewood is the colour of dusk
abundantly generous as the baobab
Time, a viscous passing of the sweetest honey.
The sweetest honey.
It was in the Ruaha region of Tanzania that a Maasai woman kindly agreed to pose for a photograph. I do not recollect her name now but in every photo, she appeared to be in shy contemplation. Here is one in which she leans against the baobob, while adorned in the collar jewellery that the Maasai are also known for. I wrote a poem for her, to her graceful beauty; serenely contemplative she appears.

Notes:

Zebu cattle ~ Maasai cattle that are well adapted to semi arid conditions. Bride price or dowry is set in cattle and paid to the family of the bride.

Killeleshua [1] [Tarchonanthus camphoratus L.]~ A plant the leaves of which are used in bedding or as a deodorant or for fragrance. It smells really lovely.

Shuka ~ garment worn by Maasai, an adaptation of the Scottish tartan

Baobab [2]~ Adansonia digitata, most long lived of the vascular plants and dots the savannas of Africa. Baobab wood has a high water content (up to 79%) and low wood density (0.09-0.17 g · cm(-3)).

Naeku [3] ~ Born in the early morning, the name of a Maasai girl born at dawn

Check the rest at www.davinasolomon.org
Davina E Solomon Sep 2021
The dough is molten at oven spring,
like a prayer to the historicity of things ..

Have we not imagined yesterdays
in the ritual of bread ? While our pasts

lay embezzled, on the tongues of men, the
sentiment of centuries colluded in germ,

echoing through heirloom remembrances
those floury philosophies of change.

While I stretch dough to gaze past
a windowpane, as far back as Khorasan ..

they were other names then, another
elasticity in time. Faith is a memory

of settled people in lands of milk and
honey, where every drought, every flood

spawns a new religion .. and the wheat,
always begs the same old question:

Are we there yet, in the fertile crescent
of opportunity ? The grains haven't changed

in their stolid countenance - long, subtle,
germy, cosseted. In the granaries of kings ..

they are willed by royal decree, never to die
in an eternal future and like humankind,

who score bread in the cuneiform of hearts,
grain is always thirsting to seed the land.
http://davinasolomon.org/2021/09/19/incandescent-bread/
Davina E Solomon May 2021
In an ocean of night, dreaming of a closed dining space / We were snooping in on a harsh conversation of strangers that we knew / Towards dawn you spoke / as real in the dream as an apparition in the real / of Father and Mother / of them cruising off on a road trip / You faltered at a word I recollect but won't spell / It absorbed into whale song ticking to a time piece / itching to signal morning / and I could feel the depth of many fathoms  floating over a waking to Spring / like being pressed against a cherry blossom trunk / in a tug of war, a push and pull / Let's go Jungian on this, he is much more pleasant / I did see a bumble bee yesterday, not a golden scarab, although that could have been a circadian premonition / and I woke up to a shower of blossoms //
This post was written for the North Atlantic Right Whale, of which sadly, only 360 remain. As per NOAA, " The North Atlantic right whale is one of the world’s most endangered large whale species, with less than 400 individuals remaining --- Whaling is no longer a threat, but human interactions still present the greatest danger to this species. Entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes are the leading causes of North Atlantic right whale mortality. Increasing ocean noise levels from human activities are also a concern since the noise may interfere with right whale communication and increase their stress levels".
The article cited below wades through many concepts including: mistrust of the unconscious, wake centrism, in a waking dream and refers to the cinematic treat 'Jacob's Ladder'. I'd like to return to this movie again someday, Tim Robbins was wonderful in this. I've quoted some part of the essay below. Poems sometimes just conjure like a mist above a fallow field, there's no logic to it, or is there? Maybe someday, the dream scientists will let us know.
Here is an interesting read about Dreaming [1]. Quoting part of the article here: The mind seems to grow fidgety and uncomfortable cooped up in a body 24/7. Mentally, dreaming is like taking off a pair of tight shoes at the end of the day: the liberated mind is no longer constrained by somatic sensory and motor processes. Reminiscent of common notions about the soul leaving the body in sleep, dreaming unfetters the mind from the world of matter; and, having vacated the body, consciousness is free to pandiculate, ponder and play. The dreaming mind stretches, yawns and reawakens in a strangely familiar place where it can time travel, dialogue with demons, get trapped in a mundane loop of doing dinner dishes or soar with angels. With Jacob’s ladder in place, the sky is literally the limit.
[1]~https://aeon.co/essays/we-live-in-a-wake-centric-world-losing-touch-with-our-dreams
Davina E Solomon May 2021
We thought of us today as single cells
'Ciliating' across the universe of colour
under the coverslip of time; a microcosm
of pedalling plants or fettuccine of cells.

The hues of darkness are pink and bright,
in beach slippers tracing paths on glass,
and those springing Vorticella are flowers
we created in our fictions of science ...

But all possess a veneer bound
cytoplasm of affection, crawling like
Annelids across the void in a world
bursting in avatars of the invisible

or their transparent real selves
glowing like gemstones in the sky,
or simply opaque as we are, each
to the other under the play of light,

polarized views secreted within some
dark muddied pond, harbouring
the cells of love, shedding cuticles
of sorrow, laying the germ of tomorrow

or funneling delight in little green globes
that make food ... are food. We must be
blessed to be cytoplasm like them or cursed,
I don't know which, but it's all profound.
Blepharisma is found in fresh and salt water, is a unicellular ciliated protist and is pink due to the presence of the photosensitive pigment, blepharismin. These pink creatures are photophobic, seek out darkened areas and lose their colour or die in strong light.

Vorticella is a ciliated protozoan with a stalk that is made up of a contractile organelle which serves as a molecular spring, so it can contract. This organelle or spasmoneme is said to have a higher specific power than the engine of the average car.

Volvox is a green algae that forms spherical colonies of up to 50,000 cells and live in freshwater habitats.

Cyanobacteria are Gram-negative bacteria that obtain energy via photosynthesis, also called blue-green algae but aren’t eukaryotes like algae.

Stentors are among the biggest known extant unicellular organisms and also ciliated.

Annelids belong to phylum Annelida that includes earthworms, leeches and the microscopic polychaete worms, oligochaetes.

Cytoplasm is the jelly like substance within the cell membrane, excluding the nucleus. All together, they make the protoplasm of a cell.
Davina E Solomon Apr 2021
And the knowledge of the hedgerow plant, I found embedded in leaf veins ... like in mine, etched along blue lines of a notebook. In the ripples on the remnants of water that pooled, before the mudflats claimed them are the striations of  ol'butot near  Naivasha. His stories tell of caves, a gleaming obsidian of a pre historic introspection. Do forty day fasts suffice to exorcise the springs of sulphur or the forced baptism of a flash flood washing six souls to Hades ? The sun glinted at me through a narrowness of fate, a gorge of interminable seconds and I marvelled at the strata of time in a warp, for it blurted out a moan.

Love spoke in nuanced layers of molten flow that crawled to stillness. Can I not say that stone speaks? A couple of hundred years back in time, self titled discoverers  had seen land that had not been unseen by the thousands who lived for thousands until then. So yes, the strata spoke to me, like the striations in the leaves and the lines that were everywhere telling stories of interminable seconds. Time grooves like a death valley in an engraving, etched like a memory of that which has never been, ripples on sand, circles on water,
Anything can trigger a poem, this one dominoed into Hell’s Gate Park in Kenya. Down below, a random photo I took inside, a few years earlier. It was strange, there was hardly anyone there that day, except the hot sun and a tiny array of grassland herbivores.

“A sparse region of natural beauty, Hell’s Gate runs west of the ancient lava flows of Mount Longonot, a 9,111-foot-high extinct volcano dominating Lake Naivasha and the Rift Valley. Combined with Longonot and Naivasha, the region forms a unique sanctuary for bird and animal life. It has been a longtime favorite of hikers, rock climbers, and nature lovers” [Ref~https://www.csmonitor.com/1985/1203/ohells.html]
Davina E Solomon Aug 2021
An evening set in metered rhyme,
of pinecones, gainfully bracted
in the manner of spiralling time.

No perfect measure yields a woody cone
although conifer strobilus gilded ratio makes.
The standard mesh of numbers alone

symbolise a hope that a glorious God
assembled in a perfect factory line,
this defiant change to perfectly flawed.
https://davinasolomon.org/2021/07/18/no-perfect-measure/
Davina E Solomon Jun 2021
Blessed are the poorly, for theirs is the kingdom of mudflats

The dispirited streak turgid waters
sinuously, through unsettled feelings
in the wake of boats shedding
filaments of fuel,
sheen on a turbid infusion
and the cordgrass nods a resilience
or an apathy as the silt settles
on their Piscean gleam

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see a salted heaven

Angelic Menhaden of the Atlantic,
are silvery stretches of scale,
dulled in death under a festering sun
and the retreating tide of dying waters
brined in ocean, freshwater spirited
to secret spaces, some dammed crevasse,
now  tumultuous  fate in a salted heaven

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled

At the Tabgha of this intertidal palette
Cattails whisper beatitudes
latched onto the tails of wind gusts
and the plovers descended
in a litany of  bird song
amassed like the manna
trailing  tidal waters
as the sea swallows herself.
Blessed are the herons, the mallards,
the geese. Time is measured
in the passage of fish that
cycle themselves through the innards of birds

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the rocks

The meek Menhaden, leaped
onto the rocks that hemmed the inlet,
escaping the hungry habits of herons.
They inherited Earth in agony    
pounding a rocky surface,
but the air I swim, had no water.
I prodded these  Menhaden of the Rock
to the fringe of retreating tides,
and they leaped to die once more
to breathe water that had no air

Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted

Blessed is the discomfiture
of my brackish tears
that streak marsh faces
as fish struggle out of dead water.
I take comfort I don't inhabit
tainted places or do I take comfort,
all places are the tint of poison,
the gleam of a genesis of sorrow
The fifth of June has been designated as World Environment Day by the United Nations. Today, in fact, will inaugurate the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), a global mission to revive billions of hectares, from forests to farmlands, from the top of mountains to the depth of the sea [1]. Pakistan is the host country this year for the official celebrations. As we are aware, the protection of the environment and its restoration is of utmost importance given the damage to our environment. Today, helps highlight that our well being and economic development, are intricately and intimately connected to the health of the environment in that, World Environment Day, gives us an opportunity to learn more about our ecosystems, cultivate broad and enlightened opinions, encourages responsible conduct by people, their communities and their enterprises to help preserve and enhance our habitat [2].


I chose to write a poem on the Atlantic Menhaden, fish that are an important part of commercial fisher and in estuarine habitats . They are filter feeders, consume phytoplankton and zooplankton and constitute the largest landings, by volume, along the Atlantic Coast of the United States. They are found in coastal and estuarine waters like in the Hackensack Meadowlands [3]. They are harvested for use as fertilizers, animal feed, and bait for fisheries including blue crab and lobster, are food for striped bass and other fish, as well as for predatory birds, including osprey and eagles. Menhaden are silvery in color with a distinct black shoulder spot behind their gill opening [4]. It was late (November, December) last year that I spotted a lot of dead fish in the Hackensack river. It was reported then, that it may have been the lack of oxygen in the water [5] It was only in April this year that species of Vibrio bacteria were suspected as having caused multiple ***** failure in the Atlantic Menhaden [6]. In any case, high levels of contaminants in rivers, along with sediment make up for low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water in summer and along with the bacteria, are a threat to this variety of herring that are important to many other species that make the Hackensack their home.

Read more at
davinasolomon.org/2021/06/05/on-world-environment-day-beatitudes-for-the-dead-fish-that-inherited-the-mudflats/
Davina E Solomon Jun 2021
The soul must be a tuning fork,
for the pandemic flit past in a vibration.
Then all is still when the light gets the eyes
and the heart can define radiance,
simply in the clarity of lines and form.

The poetry of pathos is an epic elegy,
and of happiness, a paean to a heart beat.
A hive mind stilled to a limpid pool of reflection,
and a pall lifts, like the sun rises on glass held
in bezels of steel, on girders of strength.

Adored, blessed, loved, as clear as the day
is green. Time can be a blur in a cloudy soul
catharsis but the blue is simply sky, and
a warm heart's the colour of light. Structure
has wheels that are meant to turn.
t is based on the Vessel and the structures around it. The Vessel, that looks like a beehive, is an interactive artwork in New York City, that was imagined by Thomas Heatherwick and Heatherwick Studio. It is Comprised of 154 intricately interconnecting flights of stairs, almost 2,500 individual steps and 80 landings(~https://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com/discover/vessel)
Davina E Solomon Mar 2021
The streets fidget at this intersection at gazes of stone men / sweeping birds in the gusts of a smug exhalation / The signs say they aren’t meant to feed the pigeons / falling onto the pavement like confetti /hoping for crumbs of compassion //

In the morning hid behind a mask / we exchange glances of belief / truths etched in our silhouettes as the eyes / paint vivid portraits of what must exist/ in the blue, green, grey, brown / hazel or amber inlay of the other //

The times when our smiles were obscured in sunlight and streetlight / people bled onto the path in a diaphanous glow / The invisible slipped past our eyes / but not of the stone men / They have always been solid / sentinels of our displaced pulse / as we erred in the manner of stone //
At the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in Manhattan, in the company of stone men and pigeons ~ the idea for sculpture poetry grew out of the figures that haunt the plaza that is devoid of as many people as in the days before the pandemic.
Davina E Solomon Mar 2021
The clouds fell from their lofty perch onto her belly / wrapped in layers of time this Matryoshka/ flouncy in snowflakes / cold startles the birds / the trains are stillborn / marshes float on ice / and nights look like silence //

She fashions a snowman / they speak in parables of time / is it shaped like a sisal string or a potter’s wheel / does it appear like a falling star / disappear like a glacier / is it syllabic conversations at dusk / or chimneys brewing clouds into sky / while fires roast limbs of arthritic trees //

Her sundial is circular / like the lunacy of seasons / His, fractalizes into uncertain snowflakes / transformed by an arrow flung far to an unknown distance / Gaia awakens in ****** spring / a forced maturity squinting at trains that furrow the land / bleeding in cherry blossoms / wealthy as the emerald leaves she wears to a country gala //

The snowman computes time / stray facts the winter wind whispered into his ear / as he melts into January’s cloak / like tears shed for sparkling fractals lost forever / The Earth believes in the manner of faith , he will resurrect on her sundial / as she kisses time into momentary stillness, turns water into ice //
My niece is besotted with Elsa from Frozen. She wears the dress over or under everything and can’t do without her crown. In the sequel to the film, Olaf the snowman gets lost in the enchanted forest where Gale, the wind spirit makes him so dizzy that he suffers an existential crisis. He concludes through his ordeal that he is yet to grow up and when he does, everything will make sense. It is easy to grow up in real life, we seem to have our paths laid out for us that we imitate in the manner of our forebears and peers. Yet, we still think about the meaning of our existence. Olaf believes it is in the soaking up of facts, to learn more and then add to this by further inquiry and action. I wonder if the measure of a successful existence is connected to how we view time..

The fact that we still think about the meaning of life is the reason they have an Olaf in a Children’s animation film. Are the answers readily available, for all that life throws at us, so we may clarify the turbid, find clarity, see the invisible ? Today’s poem is to ponder the truths held in a snow covered land, trying to make sense of time.

— The End —