{"id":935,"date":"2020-10-18T16:04:10","date_gmt":"2020-10-18T16:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/?p=935"},"modified":"2020-10-18T16:07:28","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T16:07:28","slug":"syncopated-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/2020\/10\/18\/syncopated-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"Syncopated Joy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"466\" src=\"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/10-18-2020-Sncopated-Joy-1024x466.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-936\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/10-18-2020-Sncopated-Joy-1024x466.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/10-18-2020-Sncopated-Joy-300x136.jpg 300w, https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/10-18-2020-Sncopated-Joy-768x349.jpg 768w, https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/10-18-2020-Sncopated-Joy-1536x698.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/10-18-2020-Sncopated-Joy-594x270.jpg 594w, https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/10-18-2020-Sncopated-Joy.jpg 1566w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/audio\/Syncopated%20Joy.m4a?_t=1603037200\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n<p class=\"fonts-plugin-block\" style=\"font-weight: normal;font-size: 15px;line-height: 1.3\"><strong><em>Syncopated Joy<\/em><\/strong><br>\u00a0<br>Trees migrate.\u00a0<br>It takes decades, but forests are<br>on the move and humans barely<br>register their amazing wanderings.\u00a0<br>\u00a0<br>Can you hear them sing?\u00a0<br>Can you hear them raise voice,<br>orchestrate their canopies in<br>splendid wonder?<br>Glory!<br>Glory!<br>\u00a0<br>Overstories sway inside lower winds.<br>Understories seldom feel a thing from<br>wind, but down there, down just up<br>from the forest\u2019s floor ~ that\u2019s where the<br>low, hushed hum begins; escalating as it<br>moves up through the trees, shivering<br>limbs awake.\u00a0 A call to arms.<br>Arms reach up, up, UP!\u00a0<br>\u00a0<br>Up, and up and up and into an indigo sky,<br>vibrating with stars singing night alive!<br>Night syncopates* toward dawn, dawn<br>gently chants aloft the tree\u2019s overstory,<br>bidding those burnished upper limbs: join the<br>choral.\u00a0 Drown within her brightening!<br>Sing!<br>SING!<br>\u00a0<br>Undulating upward: up from lush loamy floors,<br>up through roping light piercing through<br>leaf filled boughs, up through scattered old<br>bones of each tree, UP the hums swirl gathering<br>momentum until, at long last, each hum<br>bursts forth into the forest, joins, stretches wide,<br>breaks joy\u2019s earthly plane with a sonorous<br>melody quite unlike any other and one which<br>demands human ears STOP and listen, even<br>if what we hear defies possibility and simply<br>echoes into the realm of \u201cDo you hear that?\u201d.<br>\u00a0<br>Stopping, I tilt an ear upward. Yes. I. Hear. That.<br>The forest\u2019s refrain enters every cell of my body<br>and rides each to its core: ribosomes dance!<br>Flesh ripples, hairs jump upright, heart quivers.<br>Notes cant skyward, careening on a passing wind<br>leveraging themselves against the silence.<br>Undersong, melody, refrain, phrase, theme, all<br>interlaced, as in the entwining of the forest\u2019s limbs:<br>singular, reaching, united as one note hums within<br>another.\u00a0 Understory, overstory, otherstory:<br>THERE, resisting silence, THERE, SING!<br>SING!<br>\u00a0<br>Later the trees exhale a communal sigh,<br>demanding they quiet and rest.\u00a0 A palpable<br>shudder ripples across the detritus, into the<br>sapling\u2019s heart and around all the trees: primeval<br>heartwood or recent births ~ all.\u00a0 Night wanders.<br>I wonder.<br>\u00a0<br>Why don\u2019t humans have dozens of words for \u201ctree\u201d?<br>\u00a0<br>\u00a0<br><br><br>*shortens, shrinks<br>\u00a0<br>by Barbara Helvey Hughes, 2020<br>\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=935"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":939,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions\/939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}