Saturday, March 3, 2012

Man and Tree - (A Prose Poem)

The architecture of people and plants is similarly erect; both are dominated by vertical axes.  Of course, the human animal when immobile has denser connections with plant life than just their shared verticality. The inflorescent brain of a person: like the crown of the tree; two eyes set apart like points along stout branches subtending and supporting the crown; the base of our cranial canopy is set on top of the stout trunk of neck and spinal cord.

A man firmly planted in the soil at the level of his neck would seem to flair out belowground – his appendages flailing likes roots in the deep earth – fingers and toes like adventitious rootlets fumbling through the soil. Man and plant are symmetrical friends – from crown to root, man and tree are linked by anatomical geometry.

A longer piece on tree architecture on 3quarksdaily.com this coming Monday 5th March.

3 comments:

  1. I am curious if anyone can recognize the book in which this doodle was scribbled?

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  2. I think it speaks volumes that only the head is above the soil. : ) Shouldn't the trunk be the trunk with the arms as branches? You need to do more with your hands, man, though I take it this sketch isn't very recent.

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  3. If memory serves the sketch was responding to the mystery text...and the little prose piece comes after. The neck, is above the soil...a little, at least, and the neck serves as the trunk in this analogy. Thee rooting system is quite extensive, it's true.

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