Nature’s totems

Going through old papers, I found the poem “Indian Pipes” written in 1988 by the legendary glass blower, Paul Standard, a mystic, poet, seer of how everything “inter-is” as Thich Nhat Hanh would say. “Indian Pipes” appears imprinted on the back of his blown-glass indian pipes, a delicate plant forever preserved. When I come across someone’s work who expresses my awe so completely, I have the felt sense of being interconnected with that person, and feel the embodiment that all beings “inter-are”. Indian pipes, or ghost pipes, have stopped me in my tracks every time I see them. I’ve never once noticed them on the forest floor and just kept on walking. They bring me quite literally to my knees as I kneel on the leaves and get as close to them as I can to see the ethereal pink hues. This is one from last autumn on Lookout Mountain, having turned its head upward, giving up the ghost to become what Paul Stankard writes is “nature’s totem in the ground.”

Indian Pipes

White mystical totems

in moist shaded woods

offered fluid folk cures

for those who understood.

Saprophytic flowers, cluster,

nodding in light

feed off decay

develop upright.

Black-spotted pods

drying pastel brown

stand erect through winter

Nature’s totems in the ground.

-Paul Stankard