Mad cow disease, hoof and mouth disease, anemic aquacultured salmon. What do these all have in common? Crowding. Confinement. Improper and unnatural nutrition of animals. Fourteen years ago, before people were talking about the dangers of genetically modified organisms, I wrote the poem below:

Seeking the Wild Exception

There are unseen patterns,

Afloat in the Universe,

Anchored to the Earth by mineral salts,

That determine the Form of each plant.

A plant is but a condensation of a Pattern,

or Thought,

Expressed in transformation of minerals, water

and sunlight,

Yearning to retum, through evolution,

to its true home,

In Infinity.

A human body, also, is a condensation of

a Pattern,

And the human body is anchored to the earth,

Through the minerals of plants,

And the human Spirit is aided in its retum

to Infinity

By the Essences of plants, arising, lifting,

upwards toward the Light.

The sea plants were the first ones to truly anchor themselves

To the earth, through concentrating minerals

at their lower end,

And then floating, upwards, lifting, back toward

the Light.

We all had to go down into the depths with dark

and salt,

Before we could lift, upward, toward the Light.

I ask my daughter:

"If we destroyed all the daisy plants,

(like the ones in the vase on the table)

And all the daisy seeds ....

Would there still be a chance for daisies?

Would the world again evolve through daisies?

Does the Pattern still hold?"

I have sent her into the Darkness,

to ponder on the Light.

She knows that her Pattern is anchored

and uplifted

By the Patterns of kelp, alaria, dulse, nori,

Buckwheat, oats, rye, wheat, millet, rice, com,

Carrot, kale, onion, bean, burdock, cabbage

and broccoli,

To name a few.

The thought of losing any link in the

Chain of Being

Troubles her ....especially in this precarious age.

The human family is asleep to this Awareness,

This Knowing:

Destroy the plant patterns,

Or interfere with them,

In the name of "improvement"

And you will distort the human pattern.

A sea harvester seeks the wildness of the

outermost islands,

In hopes of capturing the unspoiled patterns...

And when he grows old,

He roams in fields of waving grain

Seeking the Wild Exception.

---Larch Hanson