Sonja Arntzen is a dear friend of mine who recently sent me this email: “I finished reading Whale in the Door<\/i> yesterday.\u00a0 I found it informative, moving, inspiring and much, much more.\u00a0 You danced a delicate balance between your passionate commitment to protect Howe Sound and your openness to listen to all points of view.”<\/p>\n
She told me she had written a poem inspired by Whale in the Door<\/em>, and I was delighted when she agreed to share it here along with some explanation.<\/p>\n “Around the same time that I was reading Whale in the Door<\/em>, there was a call for submissions by the League of Canadian Poets for poems about trees for a new anthology.\u00a0 I was visiting my step-son in Tacoma and taking a walk in the woods came on a Douglas Fir with a plaque at its base and realized for the first time that the official Latin name for Douglas Fir has \u201cpseudo\u201d and the Japanese tree name \u201ctsuga\u201d in it.\u00a0 Pauline\u2019s book makes one want to know more about everything in this ecosystem we inhabit and so I immediately wanted to unravel the puzzle in the Latin name for this tree that is such a pillar of the our natural community.\u00a0 The results are in the poem.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0Beyond Naming<\/strong><\/p>\n I stop to read the plaque<\/p>\n at the base of your<\/p>\n deeply furrowed trunk,<\/p>\n even though I know your tribe well,<\/p>\n \u201cDouglas Fir\u201d<\/p>\n my eye sticks on your<\/p>\n Latin name: Pseudotsuga Menziesii<\/em><\/p>\n whence the falseness, why<\/p>\n the Japanese tsuga<\/em> in your name?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n David Douglas, a Scots botanist<\/p>\n first planted your seeds<\/p>\n in Britain, 1827, thereby<\/p>\n claiming your common name.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Before him, Menzies, another Scots botanist,<\/p>\n on Captain Vancouver\u2019s ship in 1791<\/p>\n noted you on the shores of this wild land,<\/p>\n recommended your virtues to<\/p>\n the Royal Navy for exploitation,<\/p>\n masts and spars peerless.<\/p>\n Menzies roamed the world seeking<\/p>\n new species and fame,<\/p>\n \u201cdiscovered\u201d in Japan,<\/p>\n a new kind of conifer, tsuga<\/em>,<\/p>\n hemlock in our tongue,<\/p>\n (hemlock needles crushed<\/p>\n make a good tea<\/p>\n but release a scent like poison hemlock<\/p>\n apparently.)<\/p>\n Menzies gained the prize<\/p>\n of fixing you in<\/p>\n the taxonomy of conifers, labeling you in Latin,<\/p>\n not a true fir, Abies<\/em>,<\/p>\n nor quite a Tsuga<\/em><\/p>\n so \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0pseudo\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Given your magnificence,<\/p>\n your uniqueness,<\/p>\n could he not have come up<\/p>\n with a genus just for you,<\/p>\n or at least,<\/p>\n taken the name that First Nations<\/p>\n had called you for thousands of years?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But imagination is not<\/p>\n the strong suit of taxonomists;<\/p>\n the First Nations are many,<\/p>\n each tribe within a nation<\/p>\n called you by a different name.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not that names given by<\/p>\n our ant-like species<\/p>\n matter to you,<\/p>\n you simply are.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You reign in the rain forests<\/p>\n with your sister, dancing Queen Cedar<\/p>\n her name not quite right either,<\/p>\n since she\u2019s a cypress.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dark waves rise<\/p>\n on the Salish Sea,<\/p>\n I place my hand<\/p>\n on your rough trunk,<\/p>\n pray for your health,<\/p>\n the health of your habitat,<\/p>\n in awe of what you are<\/p>\n beyond any given name.<\/p>\n Sonja Arntzen taught classical Japanese poetry and literature for twenty-five years.\u00a0 Currently living on Gabriola Island in B.C, she continues to research and translate works of classical literature, particularly women\u2019s poetic diaries of the 10th to 11th Century. Her most recent translation is The<\/em> Sarashina Diary <\/em>(Columbia University Press, 2014). Since 2005, she has been publishing her own English tanka and haiku in journals such as Gusts<\/em>, Eucalypt<\/em>, Kokako<\/em> and Red Lights<\/em>. With Naomi Beth Wakan, she also produced two books of \u201cresponse tanka,\u201d Double Talk<\/em> (2010) and Reflections <\/em>(2011). And now writing longer poems has captured her enthusiasm.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sonja Arntzen is a dear friend of mine who recently sent me this email: “I finished reading Whale in the Door yesterday.\u00a0 I found it informative, moving, inspiring and much, much more.\u00a0 You danced a delicate balance between your passionate commitment to protect Howe Sound and your openness to listen to all points of view.” She told me she had written a poem inspired by Whale in the Door, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[23,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whaleinthedoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whaleinthedoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whaleinthedoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whaleinthedoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whaleinthedoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/whaleinthedoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168,"href":"https:\/\/whaleinthedoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whaleinthedoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whaleinthedoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whaleinthedoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}