The Tree of Knowledge

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So grows the light

 

So grows the Tree 

 

The living world

is a lightning storm of Knowledge

 

The living world

is a luminous Tree of Knowledge

 

This Knowledge is an appetite and digestion

            from ancient genes that tally every touch and taste

            a hunger deeper than a stomach

            an incessant and absorbing consumption more nutritious than a stew       

and we are what we eat

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The amoeba knows

     the darkness from the light

The atlas moth knows

     the scented gradient of sex

The salmon knows

     the long and tortuous road home

The tanager knows

     the tasty caterpillar from the poisoned pill

Your darling chouchou knows    your precious pet

     knows your voice    your moods    your ways   

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This living world is wet and slippery with Knowledge

a liquidity of growth and flowing change

and without this currency      

            a shriveled crust   an empty shell

in a dry and barren desert

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It is Knowledge

            that consumes and converts

            breeds and conceives

            shapes and transforms

            infects and transmits

            that drives the trek of this earthly craft

            rocking            on the Sea of Ignorance

 

We see no limit to this sea

We see no limit to the light

and we   

          skilled fishermen   seasoned sailors

          proud parsers of the spectrum

Sapiens

we are alive with language    

 

For in the mist of our beginnings there came the Word

and the Word is ________

                                                      Is what?

Is what            

                            depends on your poor ‘bible’             

            what pages you esteem in the greater Book of Nature

            where the Tree was planted and grew voluminous

​

Here in a savannah of whispers

is the chapter of Tribal wisdoms

the oldest and most gnarled root bristling with shoots

            of curious forms       of florid idiosyncrasy

the oldest texts    with pages  thin and worn

            all palimpsests  betraying the calloused hands

                        of fearsome men    of calculating women

            who cooked and stewed the verbs

                        who dressed then chewed the meaty nouns

as the Tribes grew strong but separate in their syntax 

exchanged their differences in colloquial wares  

or the curses and howls of bloody wars

 

And from this thicket of vines and brambles

we formed the words for us and them

            for you and I     male and female

            for the stealthy animated forest

            for our collective tools and husbandries

and rites of order that ruled our primordial world

 

As the thorny bush grew tall

there was excitement in the cerebral folds and in the temporal fields   

          from all shoots and branches     leaves   more leaves

                     a greater luxuriance of verbal foliage   capturing the light

          reverberating through our thickening mental landscapes

and in this web of fibrous greenings

new creatures and clever crafts cropped up in the garden of thought

          and we celebrated the delights of eyes and ears

                     the skills of hands and tongues         

          as extravagant passages were danced into our memories

we relished the tales of discovery and invention   

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And around our communal fires

we sang the words for music and for dancing

            for labor and for laughter

            for sharing the fruits of cunning and of artistry    

            we savored the symbols of our storied histories

                         with the names of our embellished ancestries                    

 

In time the sturdiest shoots grew into trunks

            a hardened stock of themes and variations

the branching and entwining tribes   merged into peoples

and from these engrained matings came

            the awakening of twisted fates         

                       the painful births of spirits

            as the people gathered in their sentences

searched for their safety   sought their solace

            in gaudy painted symbols and smoky rituals

            in the din of horns and drums   the gibberish of priests 

            and their long concatenations of rites of life and living sacrifice     

                                    around the mouths of flaming altars  

 

And in the worship of the burning wood

we formed the words for good and evil

            for sinners and for saints                   

            for the clouded skies of gods and demons

            for shadowed casts and corrupted hierarchies                    

                        we trembled under the haunting words

                                      of arrogance and power 

 

Much higher in the light the leaves formed flowers

           where the Tree became a reflective radiance          

among subtle and convoluted leaves the flowers       

           unfolded in questions   each petaled probe

                     a nuanced shade of color

           that lingered through the fog in new and luminous words   

the thinnest words    lighter than a slowly lifting mist

           slowly became the air we breathed

                     bathed and redefined the panoramas of the mind

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And the Knowing Tree reveled in itself

as we wrote the words for intelligence and reason

           for chaos and for cause

                      against the trials of uncertainty and doubt

           we extolled the word for justice

           for rights and freedoms

                       and we hunted the most elusive word Truth

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From the flowers of philosophy new seeds and questions 

          an effusion of curious seeds for every season

and the seeds spread in the wind and found new soil

                     as the prolific seeds questioned

          the movement of the wind

                     the composition of the soil

                                the clockwork movements of the stars    

In all fields the words became like blades of grass

          the keenest blades cutting deeper into the fabric of the world

as the Word became a probing knife

            and carved complex domains of understanding

 

The Tree of Knowledge became our forest

as we engraved upon the trunks the proud word Science

                        testing with our razor words

           for measure and mathematics 

           naming the elements   taming the shaping forces

           and emboldened to shape ourselves

we exchanged our souls for the evolution of complexity

                        and gave our faith to the blind word Progress

              

So the Tree became a forest

            and the Forest is the Tree

and all the roots and branches are alive       

the branches  twigs and leaves   alive and entwining           

            now

the leaves   the flowers   the seeds

                        alive and real 

            now

 

And a shoot of this tree has been cultivated in your brain

 

A partial and incomplete sapling has been growing in your brain

 

and you

            prime sailor of the Sea

            are a sailor in a Tree

            and will rock to and fro

on waving branches

 

And as you swing

            may you climb to the sky

 

So grows the Tree

 

So grows the light