The name of the mountains encompassing my home is Gaia;
as is the rocks, trees, river, animals that rove free, predators
and prey alike. Gaia is also mounds of frozen horseshit with
undigested hay sticking through this early autumn morning.

When a giant propeller spins and howls over cold crops of
apples and thorns, earth holds on, "as nature, indifferently
makes trees, rocks, and men come out of the ground."

One morning long ago the idea of an Anthropocene lit up a
brain that began to name, to separate everything under the
sun; until religion's myths, and science's evidence, almost
touched in a vision of eternity, bounded by Late Modernity.

 

 

 

as nature: H.N. Schneidau, Sacred Discontent: Berkeley and London,1976.
In her essay, "Accepting the Reality of Gaia," philosopher Isabelle Stengers
points out that the term "nature" is "now ritually criticized."
almost touched: "This artistic refusal to inhabit that gap, however, and trust the journey that most serious works of art have always mapped out...means that artists no longer have to be confronted with their limits." M. Brenson, "Art View; Seeing Contemporary Art in Light of Michelangelo." The New York Times, Aug. 19,1984.