Bill Griffin
Half a Tree
Artist Statement: Talking & Listening to Plants
Yogis call these buoyed minutes / the moment of the universe, and who knows . . .
(Arthur Sze, Architectures of Emptiness)
Who does know? Knowing has been the false hare speeding in front of me, dragging my greyhound brain around and around this crazy dog track of a life. Learn another thing, cinch it down into the sack of knowing with all those other squirming things. My partner’s disgust is apparent: “You know everything.” Well, I know I don’t, but that’s not because I wouldn’t like to. . . . if spruce, aspen, and a golden rain tree / converse, like mycelium, through roots? Oh yes, I would like to know that.
Meanwhile, in the buoyed minutes of not knowing, the universe is trying to speak. Perhaps I do know that I will not get far with parsing the language of rustling leaves while perched at my desk with lined paper and pen. I remember riding in the car with my mother when I was six, suddenly realizing I couldn’t NOT read the signs as they passed. So hungry is the hound brain for something to know. But Time, being a line and therefore composed of an infinite number of points between each moment A and moment B, cannot be filled with knowing. What remains unfilled, the emptiness – is that the domain of despair? of wisdom? My synapses clamor Cercis canadensis, Haemorhous mexicanus, but my spirit hushes, “Be still!” Stillness – is that the domain of joy?
Bill Griffin is a poet, essayist, and nature photographer who explores in his writing themes of ecology, community, and the search for meaning. He lives in the North Carolina foothills; since retiring after 40 years as a small town family physician he has become a full time naturalist. He guides nature hikes, maintains a section of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, and has completed over thirty annual USGS Breeding Bird Surveys. His latest poetry collection, Permanence and Flux, is forthcoming in 2027 from Iron Oak Editions.