It’s not too hard to do. In fact, it’s what many artists already do.  But printing at Maine Media is on hold right now due to Covid-19.  While I am working out my new way of living and doing and staying safe, I am grateful for the time and space and resources to be at home and at work on my artist book in whatever way I can.

So.  I have gone back to my computer, and other resources, for more research about the Objects of My Desire, and to rewrite or revise the poems for my book before I commit them to letterpress.

One of the poems in progress is an Ode to Plankton (printed below).  When people think of oceans, they often think of coasts, or vast expanses of water populated by whales, sharks, or other visible creatures. But I’d like you to  contemplate plankton – the multitude of oxygen-giving invisible organisms?  Breathing-machines I call them.  They are simply astounding!   And beautiful.

1 billion years ago, the origins of these DNA-containing nuclei were born.  Since then the enormous variety of plankton –  planktos is the Greek word for drifting – waft in currents around the globe.  The shapes of these tiny creatures are extraordinary and varied in the ultimate, but it’s their sheer volume that astounds me.  That, and the fact that they are giving off about ½ of the oxygen into the atmosphere that we are taking in.  One half!

And here is my poem as it reads today …

AN ODE TO PLANKTON

Diatom, ciliate, and krill – drifters

I’ll never meet in the sea pasture

of shimmering blue, pink, and neon

green breathing machines

for the gasping planet.

Oh, Kandinsky whirligigs,

frilled medusae, and sparkling chains

of diamond bracelets – how you offer

yourselves to mackerel, seal, shark,

and on and on through the chain

the sea bequeaths us a whale.

Photos taken from Plankton: Wonders of the Drifting World by Christian Sardet