By losing
herself, the speaker in Linda Hogan’s poem finds herself: “and like the tree I
can lose myself/layer after layer.” “Eucalyptus,” the first poem in her
collection Rounding the Human Corners, though it begins in the present,
quickly references the ancient past to draw upon its wisdom (“the others are
praying outside with old songs,” “I have been dreaming from the deep, the
ancient”). She steps into this past through red light, as if the colored light
she sees is a portal, opened “between the eucalyptus trees,” to the past that
is the seed of the present.
The only sentence with past tense
(not counting the past perfect), “they dropped three seeds in the shadows,” transitions
to present tense via a clause in the present continuous: “worlds becoming.” This
suggests continuous action from the past, through the present, and into the
future. It’s a soft transition back from past to present, back to where the
speaker started, a gentle reminder of where we’ve been, and where we can look,
that when we peel back the layers of those three seeds, we find the past, the
present, and always the present becoming. The past that briefly inserts itself
into the present is interrupted by the present—the present encircles the past.
The past is encircled by the present.
After she returns to the present, the
next sentence has no verb, no guiding action, just fragments of subject
followed by apposition. It’s a pause of subtle astonishment. The lack of verb
suggests she is held still by wonder as she admires “the naked bark” that is
revealed beneath its pealed-back layers. We see the bark’s “smooth newness”
with her in this pause as we catch our breath from traveling so far back to the
ancients.
In the poem’s second stanza,
Hogan’s speaker steps back and broadens her scope. She moves from a minute
closeness, of the bark’s smoothness and seeds’ small “shrines,” to allow room
for the perspective of certain unnamed religions. She poses a conditional
sentence where she invites the reader to imagine she “is stolen” by her senses
(“let’s say I’m stolen”), which, according to those religions, are “thieves.” The
conditional mood continues in a following clause where she likens herself to a
tree where she “can” lose herself, not that she does necessarily, for her five
senses are “all awake.” However, instead of describing her senses like she has
already done with the red light and the texture of the bark, we encounter a
simile where she likens herself to the
eucalyptus tree (“let’s say I’m stolen, because my senses are all awake, and
like the tree I can lose myself”). Here she invites us to imagine what a tree
might feel like experiencing all the five senses. Thus she relies on metaphoric
layers—both conditional mood (we are continuing to imagine, as she has asked
us, that she is stolen) and within that conditional she uses a simile to liken
herself to a tree. In this experience where she could feel “like the tree,” she
says, she loses herself, layer after layer, as if she were only sense. As if
she were only her sensing experience, “all the way down to infinity.” As if
when we imagine she’s stolen by her senses, she imagines the tree steals her.
Infinity is not easily graspable,
something not quite experience-able, and yet here she suggests we can
experience the infinite. But not through metaphysical explanations. Instead, we
experience the infinite through the body, through our senses—through sensory
experience—if only we can peel back the layers of distraction, the layers of
human bark, our hard shells, to reveal our new selves.
The world, the speaker says,
“loves the unlayered human,” a human that recognizes how our sensory
experiences are “like the tree[‘s]”. What’s interesting is how infinity refers
more to space, something countable, numbers, of having an infinite or
uncountable amount of layers that take up space, where the first part of the
poem travels through time to find those beginning spatial layers. As this moment
of looking through time intersects with finding and peeling layers away, she finds herself always returning to the present that
is always becoming and always revealing. Yet to call the result of this action
an “unlayered human” suggests a fixity to it, as if once unlayered it cannot be
undone. One cannot unsee the infinity of those peeled-away layers; but one also
cannot unsee the likeness of the self to the rest of the world. Infinity can
have a beginning but has no end. She has beginnings in her poem—“the first red
light of morning,” “three seeds” dropped by eucalyptus trees; but an unlayered
human has no end to being unlayered. We are infinitely unlayered and
unlayering.
Another reference to time occurs
at the end: once infinity is reached, once the unlayering is unlayered, “that’s
when the world has eyes and sees.” The world relies on this unlayering to see: when
this happens, when “infinity” happens. The use of “when” as a conjunction here
suggests a future event must occur (reach infinity) for the world to see. When
unending time happens, that’s when it can see. When humans are unlayered, they
are participating in this infinity with the rest of the world. That’s when the
world can witness the human as part of it and not struggling to be separate
from it. That’s when the world can sigh and say, Yes, you’ve reached us.
We’ve reached you. We are one.
To suggest, through a conditional
mood, that we must reach infinity for the world to see, challenges us to
imagine that the world already has eyes, has already seen. We are already in
the midst of infinity. We just have to unlayer ourselves, recognize we are the
world, to experience it. And she begins with three seeds, three Eucalyptus
seeds, to reveal this.
The Eucalyptus tree does more
than simply give Hogan three seeds, nor is it merely just any tree, but is
Hogan’s conduit to discover the unlayered self. The Eucalyptus is indigenous to
Australia, although in the 1850s it made its way to California around the same
time the state joined the union (Santos p. 10). The website The Magic Flower
Company says the eucalyptus has “[i]nner and outer strength: the inner
layers are strong enough to hold themselves together whilst the outer layers
are hard and tough to protect the entirety of the plant.” A holy tree for the
Australian aborigines, it is likened to sage in the American northwest, where
both have cleansing and purifying qualities. For the aborigines, “it represents
the division of underworld, Earth and heaven” (The Joy of Plants). The website Tree
Spirit Wisdom points out that the name eucalyptus derives from the Greek
“eu” meaning “well” and καλύπτω
(kalupto) which means “conceal.” (See also the Greek Liddell dictionary). The
eucalyptus, a “well-concealed” tree—just like we humans are well-concealed
beneath our many layers of blind humanness, waiting to open our eyes, to peel
back our layers to reveal our world-selves.
Although
there are no specific references to fire in “Eucalyptus,” another interesting
characteristic the Eucalyptus tree boasts is its need for fire to promote new
growth—its seeds struggle to germinate without it. Its bark, full of highly
flammable oil, sheds each year, creating a highly combustible environment at
its roots. In the event of a fire, its competition will burn away and its
scattered seeds will have a chance to sprout (Gross). Fire causes its own “beautiful undoing” (Hogan)
and a “newness” much like how the bark that peels away to catch fire reveals
the hidden layers of the eucalyptus heart. In Alchemy, fire is needed to burn
away the self’s ego or false self. Burning is the first of seven alchemical steps,
called calcination; from out of the ashes a new self emerges, one that still
contains the residue of the Self that is powerful enough to withstand even
fire.
The speaker in Hogan’s poem loses
herself, yet remains true to her deep core: “the unlayered human.” In placing
this poem as her first in the collection of Rounding the Human Corners,
Hogan offers a way for her readers from the beginning to perceive ourselves not
only in relation to the natural world, to trees, but also to find ourselves
within ourselves, selves that, perhaps, will be unlayered as we peel back each
page of her book.
Work
Referenced
“Eucalyptus
– Awakening.” Tree Spirit Wisdom.
https://treespiritwisdom.com/tree-spirit-wisdom/eucalyptus-tree-symbolism/
“Eucalyptus.”
The Joy of Plants.co.uk. https://www.thejoyofplants.co.uk/eucalyptus
Greek
Liddell Dictionary. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=kalu/ptw
Gross,
Liza. “Eucalyptus: California Icon, Fire Hazard and Invasive Species.” KQED.
https://www.kqed.org/science/4209/eucalyptus-california-icon-fire-hazard-and-invasive-species
Hogan,
Linda. Rounding the Human Corners. Coffee House Press, 2008. P. xv.
Santos,
Robert. “The Eucalyptus of California. Seeds of Good or Seeds of Evil?”
Alley-Cass Publications, 1997. https://library.csustan.edu/ld.php?content_id=55856157.
“What
Does Eucalyptus Symbolise?” The Magic Flower Company. 9/28/2021.
https://magicflowercompany.co.uk/blogs/news/what-does-eucalyptus-symbolise