Description

Trees at night in conversation, connecting

The Sentience series was inspired by walking in a forest during a Vipassana meditation course. Looking up at the giant blue gums, their silent communication became quite palpable as well as the sense of the very long time their conversations must take, days rather than hours as their lives are much longer and slower than ours.

There has been extensive research into the sentience in plant life, highlighted, for example, in books by Monica Gagliano, Suzanne Simard, Merlin Sheldrake and Peter Wohlleben, which indicates that the conversations continue both through the air, via scents, and underground via the fungal networks. These works are attempts at expressing the interconnectedness of all things and the constant conversations that go on in the background, all around us.

 

with trees 

Small me looking up
they lean in
        a conversation lasting years
        a crowd passing favours
                                   whispered healings
                                                       gossip
                                                       warnings
                                   in the air
                                                 underground 

We must seem so fast
in a hurry
blind to the song
unfeeling the change

until silently open