New Release
A Theory of Roots: Homage to Boyd Hill Nature Preserve
Vincent Spina
About the Author
Vincent Spina is from Brooklyn, NY and now resides in St. Petersburg, FL. He received a Ph.D. from New York University in South American Literature with a specialty in Andean culture. He is the author of El modo épico in José María Arguedas. He has written four books of poetry: Outer Borough, Dialogue, The Sumptuous Hills of Gulfport, and Sundial. He has also published in various magazines and some of his poems can be heard on “The Poetry Channel”.
Amid the tangle of growth that takes place in a semi-tropical parcel of land left to its own, a yellow butterfly could remind one of a yellow flower, each there with a similar purpose: to be. Stumbling on the roots of a strangler fig that runs across the path you are walking; how can you not think of your own roots, born in a past prior to your birth and continuing into whatever impact you leave on the earth after your passing? The strangler fig will eventually choke the tree around which it grows. The fig itself ultimately becomes a micro-ecological system, housing birds, reptiles, mosses—thus, the process we know so well: death to life and back again. Through a poetical homage to Boyd Hill, one of Florida’s beautiful nature preserves, Vincent Spina explores the circle of life and death, the influence of our origins, and significance of what we leave behind.
ISBN 979-8-9858336-1-4
38 pages
$9.95
5.5" x 8.5" perfect bound, paper
Excerpt
Anhinga: Two Continents… Three Worlds
and…is as it was inscribed
in the encoded Knots (Kipu)
the Three Worlds/the three times
(Kimsa Pachakuna) and
the Kestrel—joy of mountain children—
like a knot securing the weave, sews
the Upper World to This World
—the Hanan Pacha to Kay Pacha—
brings power to their dreams,
which extends into day as
toads—peeping through cold Spring Nights—
bind their place of birth in the Under World
—Ucu Pacha—also to this place where
their eggs and semen meld
in a frenzy of flesh
and slime
and here/now, this Tupi anhinga
—snake bird—fisher of pools
and deep rivers, master of soaring flight,
balances its precarious chances
on a slim limb of a tree by the shore
of Lake Maggiore, offering
its waterlogged feathers to the sun:
voyager through
these three Sacred Worlds/these three Sacred Times:
Kay kimsa Sumaq Pachakuna,
Kay kimsa Mumaq Pachakuna