Rootless

Nothing is as motionless as it appears. On a calm day treetops sway beyond our sight, and deep within the woodgrain parallel lines knot and kink. Lately I’ve been drawing samples of trees that live in the Bay Area, but are originally transplants from as far away as rural Australia – they are more worldly than they seem. We are surrounded by native redwood forests, but within this landscape that seems so quintessentially American are overlooked old-growth transplants brought here a century ago during the lumber boom. To honor their journey, I paired each drawing of these trees with a line of poetry that echoes and increases their movement like a Fibonacci number, culled from poets near and far: Robert Hass, Mary Oliver, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Pablo Neruda, Wasila Szymborska, and Li Po. Even out of context, words and nature make their own sense.