The following piece is an excerpt from Glenn Bach’s Atlas, a long poem about place and our (mis)understanding of the world. Atlas began in 2003 as a sound art project, but has since evolved into an open-ended long poem.
The bowl of this sycamore and the care taken over its ornamentation.
In striking profile the fine headlands of Laguna Peak.
Mugu Lagoon and a long stretch of sand and marsh the places in which they thrive.
And so suddenly the natural forces that have shaped this landscape startling.
Now an estuary with inputs from the channel a lagoon without a watershed.
Of the wilderness abound you can’t farm land that’s underwater.
Only a small number of trees documented on the plain.
For the eucalyptus like the long windbreak down Victoria.
For the willows and cottonwood along the Santa Clara.
For the live oaks and sycamores whose branches met overhead.
Elsewhere the rain falls alike and the land is taken up.
Here the creeks that once sank into the alluvial fans.
Here the groundwater depleted will the dams be dismantled?
Here the sunrays break is the layer of the Chumash still visible?
