Ascospore life to live
On the tree surface
Living hyphae tend to a lenticel
Exploring corky bark stomata
Seeking nourishment
Of plant oil or sugar sap
Surface tensions in dew
Rain drip moved along
For an endophytic phase
To be phloem transported inside
Open plumbing to impede flow
Within a tree’s annual ring vasculature,
Making for a tree genus pandemic,
Mating type by hyphal mating type,
Continent by temperate zone continent,
Making a fruitbody to reproduce thee.
Ascospore to filamentous hyphae,
To colony, to mate, to fruitbody,
to the ascus and ascospore,
to move, to settle on tree bark:
Ascospore life to live!
Month: November 2018
Black clouds by moonlight
Black cloud lobe margins are a high silhouette
Orion’s starlight above, Indian ink blotted through
Moonlight stripes an onshore sea to an eastern horizon
Grey wisps billow around the moon above
Foreshore rocks rise like glistening black limestone sentinels
As rockpools mirror and kelp reflectors drape the shore.
Clouds half hide the constellation, after rain, tide out
tranquil boomers, long range waves sound from a bay far south.
Memory from a dog walk, nocturnal sky over outside Loughshinny pier.
Warmth
Arms brown, tacky, glistening with evaporate
In this evening’s moonless darkness
A street light ellipsis punctuates my view
Restless, the fridge quietens down
Leaving just a laptop fan to hiss
Warmth this evening postpones sleep
Necessary to get back on track
Checking online, struggling to pick up
A neighbour’ generous connection to broadcast status
Waiting for the pleasure of feedback from another soul
A mark of emotional effect provoking keyboard strikes
from something of ours in mind, like calling hello
and getting an answer, brings me a smile.
Compassion essential a prelude to contentment
A guide to happiness set down in verse
While the warmth of the evening seers
pleasure into my bones, and hands arm rub
temperature evenly under a cotton tee shirt
contentment with a toss of long hair
ready for a neck masseuse backcombing my locks
and a return to bed to get the beauty sleep I need
The Poetry Salon in Old San Juan
Having arrived, grocery shopped,
I sit on couch with an open mic,
nibble and slug provisions
in Poet’s Passage, a sit down
A stroll from a cruise-ship line,
The air fan buffets the hairs on my bare legs,
Music on the sound system is in Spanish creole.
Wicker chairs for an audience of a Tuesday.
Found this place yesterday Wednesday.
Checked it out online,
a struggle after Hurricane Maria, she wrote.
I am here for a chat with the owner
Running this art shop cum poet’s space for a decade
A living embodiment for me of a place only imagined
Spanish not English the language of choice here
Not far from Marshall’s, in the centre of town.
The Caribbean Literary Salon
A moderated space for Caribbean writers
Posting content on the internet
Joanne Hillhouse of Antigua
Kris Rampersad of Trinidad
Robert McDonald Dixon of Saint Lucia
A place on-line where I started my career in writing
Thinking of getting an article into literary magazines
Like the ‘Caribbean Writer’ or ‘Small Islands’
to address the issues of promoting my line.
Caribbean botany as a cultural creation
and a full engaging mental activity
of exploration of the landscape here,
each mushroom with its latin name
a scientific geography of the Caribbean
with a microscope and a graticule
to measure the spore dimensions,
to bring them a tangible reality.
The geography of site place names
to allow the mushroom species
to be followed in the future
ephemeral transient beings
living in the one place, year on year
after Hurricane Maria, and many storms
from when the botany begins
before the Great Hurricane of 1780.
lichenfoxie 