Eulogy thanks to Berries

Laura Emerson

Alaskauu1.blogspot.com

Alaskauu1.substack.com

Book:  Log Cabin Reflections, Kindle version

Yesterday, my dad died.  I spent a few hours processing the news, but all I felt was an emotional maelstrom and a physical need to go outside and DO something.

So I harvested Saskatoon berries.  

Berry picking has always been a calming and meditative activity for me.  It engenders feelings of gratitude at the reliable plenty of a summer’s harvest.  

 Today though, my mind was whirling with images of my dad and my siblings as I plucked the fruit. In the process, the berries soothed my knot of grief.

I remembered when I planted these six, spindly little seedlings a decade ago. Every year, I worried when the springy boughs bowed below the snow, wondering how they would fare the following spring.  Some branches broke.  Of those, I taped and splinted a few.  Some benefited.  Others didn’t.  I pruned low branches girdled beneath our deep snow by hungry voles.  I mulched in the fall and fertilized in the spring. 

Of the six trees, two are tall and prolific producers.  Three are middling, and one is the runt of the group.   

Since each tree has grown differently, I have lots of “woulda, coulda, shoulda thoughts” about my interventions. What if I had planted them elsewhere and farther apart?  Some trees hog the sun, grow taller and stronger and their boughs whip the narrower branches of an adjacent tree, which becomes stunted.  What if I had pruned them better, earlier?  Now such intervention on some major limbs might kill the tree.  What if I had watered them deeper?  What if?

All of us who are children, as well as parents, co-parents, step-parents contemplate such what ifs.  It is hard to step out of a family or community and view it from outside. 

As I gather the berries this August, I reach for those of the darkest blue hue, heavy and round with juice.  Since the berries do not all ripen at the same time, I leave those that are purple or red that need additional time to mature more slowly in the sun.  

Some berries grow in ideal locations – plenty of sun, protected from the wind, with room to grow, well separated from other berries.  

Others are physically deformed by birds that pecked part of them.  A few look fine, but skinny larvae burrowed inside and rot the interior.  In thick clusters, a single berry in the middle is always desiccated and surrounded by a gray fluff of mold, which taints the berries surrounding it. It did not have room to grow so it died and infected those surrounding it.

Each tree, each berry, each season, teaches me a different lesson.      

Today, different from a decade of other harvesting days, my mind is viewing this line of trees as a community, each tree as a family, and the berries as individual members of that family tree.

My dad has died.  The saskatoons console me because I observe among those trees and branches, life experiences that illuminate my own.  

 I can’t hug my dad.  But I can stroke these branches and think about his children and grandchildren and great grandchildren who will grow toward the sun, strong and resilient.  He was a strong tree with, like all of us, some weak branches.  He has many progeny, who will blow and bend with the winds of the future.

We have a bench along the lake shore with three stone cairns of memory.  Tomorrow, we will build a fourth.  

Between Birdsong and Boulder – Poems on the life of Gaia

Between Birdsong and Boulder (https://birdsongboulder.com/) is a collection of poems that covers the science-based story of the cosmos in lyric form. It follows the arc of life on Earth personified by Gaia – her birth, her nurturing presence, her tenacity, her ultimate fate. 

The book opens with an invitation, Will You Come, Too? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpKJNHcIUmk) and a Prelude, So It Goes. The main body is divided into four sections of poems. The first, Who Grapples with Angels and Demons, pursues the story of humankind out of the mythical Garden. It moves from lament for the lost cradle, through migration to dominion and the coming of a modern consciousness. 

The second section of poems, From So Simple a Beginning, reinterprets the Genesis days of creation in light of current science. It follows the unfolding of our universe from the Big Bang to the first light and the formation of stars and planets. With the birth of Gaia in Earth’s Hadean Eon, the poetry traces the major turns of evolution through multiple cycles of creation, destruction, and re-creation, from primitive cells in the Archean oceans to the flowering of life across the globe. 

The third section, When Gaia Arises to Cleanse the World, speaks in a prophetic voice to the growing destruction of our present epoch and Gaia’s eventual recovery in a time beyond the Anthropocene. It foresees an Edenic age when sentience lives in harmony with Gaia.

The final section, The Science of Remote Abysses No Longer Shelters Man, is haunted by visions of a world running down. Poems explore the far future, from a time beyond humans to the death of Gaia and the ends of Earth, the sun, the stars themselves. The book ends with the breath of hope in a dark, empty void and an Epilogue, Beyond the Elegant Equations.

Running through this collection are hints of transcendence beyond scientific paradigm and religious doctrine. Evoking the rhythms of scripture, the poems express a sense of wonder at the enormity of it all, yet find a quiet comfort and belonging in our niche between the ephemeral and the everlasting – between birdsong and boulder.