Who Do I Live With?

BIO-POET IN RESIDENCE, Elizabeth Woods, has written a poem to commemorate the “Residential Bioblitz” we held in August as part of the Bioblitz Project:

Who Do I Live With?

Who do I live with? And
where do I live with them?

In the backyard—garden, lawn,
and over-grown corners where wild buckwheat
twines among the thistles—Canada and bull—
and the sow-thistles, annual and spiny—binding
all together as they climb towards the sun;

and there’s buckwheat’s unlikely cousin, Lady’s thumb,
beside the fence’s wire diamonds, an arbitrary boundary,
beyond which—over which, under which, through which—
the Garry oaks, old apple trees, the multi-varied grasses
grow where they will, oblivious to limits other than their own
—do I not live with them, too?

And what of the birds flying through
—crows and ravens, herons,
starlings, bush tits and robins,
rarely, a hummingbird, or varied thrush,
or Steller’s Jay; more recently,
a red-tailed hawk soaring across the blue—

how long do they have to stay
before I can say I live with them?
However briefly here, or there,
wherever they are, we share
the same air

Does my backyard really end? Or does it blend,
imperceptibly becoming the neighbourhood,
community, town (country, the world, the universe,
as children write their addresses) awareness
raying out like the petals of a flower, centred
here, connecting with the planet’s symbiotic
systems all together, nurturing
plants, animals, and humans, alike.

-- Elizabeth Rhett Woods, 2007