I wrote this poem when I was living in Houston, Texas about 17 years ago. A friend took me out of the hotel I was living and working in and brought me to a park. It was a relief to get away from the concrete and glass buildings, cars and roads. From that perspective the downtown took on a different appearance. It was actually beautiful, bearable, from a distance. In the park, I saw these pine trees with very large cones on the ground. Everything’s bigger in Texas! I took 3 of them back to my room and stared at them for days until the poem came out. I even tried to print it on the page as a sort of parallel helix with the poem mirroring itself, representing how they appeared to me as I rotated and appreciated them from different angles. Let me know what you think of the ending. It kind of wrote itself, and surprised me with its playful insight. Same thing with As Above, So Below.
See more poems about trees mentioned under this one: Being in Nature.
The Uncarved Blog 
December 12, 2010 at 12:34 pm |
Lovely in its easy symmetry Kenny. Nice reflection at the end adds a lot.
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December 12, 2010 at 12:57 pm |
Thanks, Carla. The plays on ‘found’ and ‘wanting’ was a nice surprise that naturally led to the ‘You’, which is the whole lila we’re all caught up in, whether we know it or not.
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September 7, 2014 at 11:37 pm |
[…] companion piece Sometimes Poetry Happens. Also see As Above, So Below and a complementary poem, Pine Cone Trees, written several years later. A later nature poem, Being in Nature, was written in Vancouver, […]
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April 27, 2017 at 10:54 am |
[…] See trees—a poem about the nature of trees, a sequel to Being in Nature, a gift from a tree. Both written mid-1990′s in winter, Vancouver, BC. And one in written in Houston, Texas: Pine Cone Trees. […]
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May 23, 2022 at 4:35 pm |
I found this beautiful art work using pine and spruce cones on this Instagram account by Lucia Pec @my.creative.nature. She posted my poem there https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd6S-fotrW6/. See more of her work in her Gallery at My Creative Nature http://www.mycreativenature.net/gallery.html.
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