And here is a poem by Don Colburn which was inspired by the buckyball installed at Tryon Creek State Park.

The poem was published in Windfall (Spring 2009) and illustrates the upheaval the piece caused in its ecosystem:

THE NATURE OF REALITY

Tryon State Park

In the park where a million trillium
wave white kerchiefs at the world,
a sculptor who studied physics
wanted something else to stand for
everything. He built a Buckyball
big as a house, steel pipes
bolted into pentagons and hexagons
the eye turns into doors and windows
to frame the air, the underbrush
going green and sky holding off rain.
Culture and nature, he said – the cage
of their embrace. Two saplings
live inside his art, and the art
surrounded by these woods

which are not pleased. Not
in my back yard, says the old-growth
Douglas fir. Betcha anything,
says a native shrub, he’s out-of-state.
Foot traffic, you’ll be sorry, the glossy
poison oak warns. I’m not going anywhere,
mutters a bump on a mossy log.
Me either, says a boulder left behind
by a glacier, but I still don’t get
the whole modern art thing.
Want visual metaphor? Look at me,
cries the maidenhair fern. And the woodpecker
flashing his red-crested hammerhead:
Galvanized steel? What’s the point?