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THE BEAVER'S DAM
The beaver is knitting together wood and mud, the balance between stillness and chaos is chosen, stagnation and force holds the water in place, the river has allowed itself to be stilled by sticks, fallen leaves on its new mirror, Alberta paints itself onto these mirrors, we look into a beaver's dam, there are rocky mountains suspended on it, Canada remains undisturbed, wood gets caught in the beaver's long teeth like sediment, the waterproof fur is sticky and snowflakes vanish upon it, diving into lakes made mirror, we follow the beaver under and over through the water, although we never truly follow, we view the artwork and we are immersed, the beaver's wooded teeth grow long like a forest and are cut into by ice, trees sway on their long stems and fill the sky with their icy reaching, the beaver's precious teeth thaw out inside pink gums and ache to cut through wood, to sculpt and mirror this world in the dead of winter, intricate and ecosystem activated the beaver is building, careful attention is given to detail that has been knitted into the natural world, the aftermath is a long looping trail of red and yellow, broad leaves and stick mansions, big forests enclose the construction site, their discarded foliage skates the plain of the black pond, this is the new bulk of the dam, a volume of water is held in place, it's a balance of forces in nature, when the beaver stops there is this still point, that the surrounding forest responds to, the icy aspen has moved in close to warm itself by this fire of activity, the beaver works relentlessly, rubs sticks together across a wilderness of ice, frantic has become the new meditation, nature transformed by one who knows the woods best, charged with meaning from this place we move forwards. |
