One of the neighbors that we had in California
was a biologist of some sort.
And I always find scientists so fascinating I
suppose because I am so ignorant of many of the sciences.
And so I do enjoy talking to them, hiking with them
and such.
And this man one day told me that he'd
read an article that if you take a plant
and put it in a completely dark room,
it will still move its leaves in the morning
as if the sunlight was coming, reacting to sunlight
as if the plant had a memory, the time clock built into it.
That's a pretty strange idea at least it was to me.
And I was quite impressed with that.
Of course, in connection with this in Southern California,
Southern California is quite an interesting place
if not frightening.
They mow down orange groves like you might cut your lawn
and put up some rather atrocious ticky tacky houses
in their places.
And that's rather hard to take.
It's called "Compendium for Southern California."
What matters is the distance, the space through the trees.
But here at 8 o'clock the bodily functions
echo from cubicle to cubicle.
Daily the groves are shorn and buildings rise, teeth
sewn in the rut of the blade.
Morning collapse is a stab deer on the threshold.
We struggle for our clothes, our own garments
that allow some room against the public wheel.
With our own blood and ashes across our foreheads
enter the street.
Here every gesture becomes a risk for the heart and act
of survival.
We keep the chambers close.
Even in total darkness the roots eye the seasons,
the plants move their leaves up and down.