{"id":8957,"date":"2016-03-19T16:12:12","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T16:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/?p=8957"},"modified":"2016-03-19T16:25:48","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T16:25:48","slug":"happy-taxonomy-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/2016\/03\/happy-taxonomy-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Taxonomy Day!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Photo<\/a>I just learned that March 19 is Taxonomy Day<\/strong><\/a> (thanks to artist Lauren Levato Coyne<\/strong><\/a>). My Internet connection has been wonky lately, suffering fits and starts. So I didn’t want to do a post with lots of links because it would take forever to write and post. But since I have a poem with the subtitle “Taxonomy,” I’ll post that instead.\u00a0 In 2003, it was awarded second place in The Twenty-Fifth Jo-Anne Hirshfield Memorial Poetry Awards, sponsored by the Evanston Public Library.\u00a0 Peace, love, and solace<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How to know (Taxonomy)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hard to believe.
\nWhile the doctor spoke,
\nshe scanned her scant knowledge of microbiology:
\nrods and spheres and spirochetes.
\nFlashed to the boss who summed up
\nthe world as inhabited by
\nfoxes or pigs. Either you were
\na fox or you were a pig. For a while
\nin the bar after the Christmas party,
\nthey categorized all their co-workers
\nand she argued there were also cows and sheep.
\nAfter they nailed it down
\nto the mailroom clerk, they grew quiet,
\nfox or pig.
\nShe feared he might make a pass.
\nDid it all come down to that?
\nRod, sphere, spirochete.
\nFox or pig,
\nsmoking or non.<\/p>\n

A contractor once told her,
\nwhen it came to door handles,
\nmen like knobs, women like latches.
\nKnobs and latches.<\/p>\n

On the drive down the boulevard,
\ngreat grammy says, \u201cI\u2019ve never given such notice
\nto trees before. They\u2019re so green,
\nso lush this year. That one is square.\u201d
\nPerhaps you cannot see the trees
\nfor the leaves: oval, palmate,
\nlinear, reniform, cuneate, acerose,
\norbicular, hastate, spatulate.<\/p>\n

Columbia River Valley waterfalls
\nare typed: plunge, horsetail,
\nfan, tier, block, cascade,
\nsegments, and punchbowl.
\n\u201cWouldn\u2019t you like to be water?\u201d asks her son,
\n\u201cYou could fall and tumble and never get hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spatulate and spirochete.
\nFox and horsetail.
\nRegular or decaf.<\/p>\n

You may discriminate the seven types
\nof snowflakes: plates, stars,
\ncolumns, needles, spatial dendrites, capped
\ncolumns, irregular crystals.
\nOr perhaps you look at the larger picture
\nand see snow in dunes or sastrugi.<\/p>\n

Palmate and plunge
\nSpirochete and dendrite.
\nPlain or peanut.<\/p>\n

A favorite poem discusses diamond
\ncuts: pear, heart, oval, emerald,
\nradiant, baguette, trillion, quadrillion
\nmarquise, Old European,
\nand American Standard Brilliant.<\/p>\n

How to know. What
\nkind, sort, type, class, division?
\nSo many different,
\nso much the same.
\nMaybe it comes to this:
\nTwo kinds of people,
\nthose who divide the world
\nand those who don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Forest or trees.
\nSpatulate or spirochete. Living or dead.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a9 Ellen Wade Beals, 2003<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Bare<\/a>
Bare branches \u00a9 Ellen Wade Beals, 2013<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"In<\/a>
In the trees \u00a9 Ellen Wade Beals, 2013<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just learned that March 19 is Taxonomy Day (thanks to artist Lauren Levato Coyne). My Internet connection has been wonky lately, suffering fits and starts. So I didn’t want to do a post with lots of links because it would take forever to write and post. But since I have a poem with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2902,12,1581,2904,2901,13,7,16,2905,2900,32],"class_list":{"0":"post-8957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-how-to-know","8":"tag-ellen-wade-beals","9":"tag-evanston-library","10":"tag-jo-anne-hirshfield-memorial-poetry-awards","11":"tag-march-19","12":"tag-poetry","13":"tag-solace","14":"tag-solace-in-so-many-words","15":"tag-taxonomy","16":"tag-taxonomy-day","17":"tag-weighed-words","18":"entry","19":"has-post-thumbnail"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8957"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8968,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8957\/revisions\/8968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}