WEBVTT

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So each poem is going to
get rougher as we go on.

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This one is called
a "Slow Down Now"

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and it's also in four parts.

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I was reading-- there
are books that you

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can read about how to
communicate with plants

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and how to make a relationship.

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And my subject was the
rose, but the plant I found

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turned out to be a plant
called an Apache plume, which

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grows in New Mexico.

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And it actually is a
relative of a rose.

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"I've been sitting,
looking at a plant,

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without feeling time at all,
and my breathing is calm.

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There are tiny white
rosettes and the whole bush

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is a glory of feathery pink
seed heads here in the Arroyo.

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Even with closed
eyes, I see roses

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in the center of my sight,
new flowers opening out

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with pink petals
illuminated by sun behind me

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and gray green leaves.

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There's no stopping
this effusion.

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Looking at the plant
releases my boundaries,

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so time is not needed
for experience.

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Late afternoon is like
a stage, a section

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of vaster landscape and my
mood is of a summer idle.

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The dry Arroyo
sparkles all around.

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Meaning I come upon on
wild land strikes me,

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at first as a
general impression,

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then joy suffuses me.

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I accept that I've aged
and some friends have died.

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At first, meeting is
part of the plant.

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It has not yet unified
with my experience

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as a whole, like sight opening
out to its peripheries.

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There's an impasse
between my will,

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my desire, and the resistance of
a phenomenon to reveal itself.

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My seeing is so slow,
it seems to disengage.

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It becomes very cloudy.

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Then suddenly,
meaning as a whole

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interweaves with my perception.

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Desire was the motive force,
like meteorological forces.

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I repeat the words
freshness, tenderness,

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softness, the
happiness of birds,

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as if speaking
directly to a plant.

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Sunlight's a profusion
of pink plumes, thousands

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of feathery seeds
already reaching

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into the empty space
where I've taken a branch.

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That space was left open by
the vision I'm having now.

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I hold my first sight
of the Apache plume

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and the present next to each
other, and go back and forth,

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comparing them.

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I see its multiple aspects
as living representations,

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its herbal actions and
fragrances, its dynamic

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and our ecosystem, its
appearance in other habitats,

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symbiosis with birds, medicine,
administered by an oracle.

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These aspects are not
referred to, not associative,

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but intrinsic to sight.

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As I run my perceptions backward
and forward, gaps diminish,

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and slowly missing images
appear or experience fills in.

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One transforms into
another along in extending

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multi-dimensional excess
of seeing a plant.

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It's not a metaphor for the
flow of our surroundings.

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One day, you may need a
plant, you don't yet know,

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in order to connect pieces in
yourself or in a person you

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are trying to be with.

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It may be a rose bush
at the end of the road,

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a summer rose,
whitish on the outside

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of each petal and pink
inside, expressing

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its gestalt visually.

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When a plant receives this
kind of communication,

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it begins altering
chemicals, its wavelengths

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reflect in order to offer
itself to your imaginal sight

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for you to gather it.

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The plant or another
person awakes

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from embedding in the
livingness of the world

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and takes notice
of your request.

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The internal chemistry of
plants is one primary language

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of response that they possess.

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Through this method
of your perception

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of its color, its fragrance,
and infusion of its petals,

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you not only receive molecules
of plant compound itself,

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but also the meaning in yourself
the plant is responding to.

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So there is meaning in
a chemical compound.

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Even though the rose I want
is in the garden of my friend

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I miss, an Apache
plume reveals itself

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in late light in the
Arroyo, when I'm alone.

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A wild rose, Delphic.

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Illness is not healed
simply by supplying

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something rose colored and
lovely as a medicinal opiate.

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Beauty provides
form for meaning.

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And though it does help
my body, form to form,

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I'm not only what
my senses perceive,

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and my disease is not
just physical absence

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of iris fields.

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When a plant projects coherent
electromagnetic frequencies,

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organisms respond, becoming
more open, animated, connected.

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They use this amplified field to
shift biological function, DNA

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alters, there is
communication across distance.

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They can intentionally
insert information

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to strengthen
cooperative interactions

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among, for example,
an Apache plume, ants,

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and an agave in the riverbed.

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Like human families, whose
interweaving, loving bonds

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represent the long term
incorporation of supportive

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co-evolutionary
fields, continually

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embedded with new data
to enhance connection.

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You and I nest within many
such fields from a rose."

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[APPLAUSE]

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I don't know.

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