The cruelest time is winter.
Green, nesting in the folds of flower petals,
That once basked in summer sun
Withers,
Crackling in dryness.
Then comes the stomping,
Crunching of ice.
Innocence destroyed.
Category: Nature
Two Trees
In the woods,
two trees stand,
equally rooted
firmly in the ground.
Yet, as if deciding
it a curse of solitude
to try and touch a Sky
who never reached back,
one turned
to touch the other,
leaning its trunk
against its forest mate’s.
And so, I found them,
standing as lovers,
one resting upon the other,
limbs entwined in embrace.
I turned,
wishing not to disturb
what I’d found there,
and walked down the trail.
In the Songs of Birds
When I was three,
My mother taught me to read,
And words
Became playthings and playmates
As I sat in the back of the restaurant
Watching her work her dream to death.
Later, as I grew,
Family losses piled, heaped
Weighty upon the shoulders of a nine-year-old.
Words became
Escape, shelter, survival,
A path out of destruction.
And so, words stayed
For more years than I’d care to say.
But now here,
Waking mornings,
Hearing birdsong,
Or in early evening,
The warm sun blanketing
My skin as I fill the birdfeeders,
I hear words in the songs of birds.
Silly though it may seem,
The cardinals have much to say,
“It’s cheaper here. It’s cheaper here.”
To “Pretty, pretty, pretty.”
The mockingbirds chatter away
Announcements of “She’s here, she’s here, she’s here.”
And I’m not sure which bird continually asks,
“Wanna see, wanna see, wanna see a receipt?”
All the while, the Blue Jays squawk away,
Warning all the others,
“Stay away! Stay away!”
Then in the chittering of the squirrels,
I hear the demand,
“Where’s the food? Where’s the food?
You let the food run out! How dare you?”
As they scurry away,
Pretending, at least, to be afraid of me.
Among all the noise and chatter
All the words of birds and squirrels
One word, never felt before now,
I feel move within my chest,
Peace.
Falconry
A screeching hawk climbs overhead,
Gliding, swooping in pursuit,
Her flight a perfect merger
Of beauty, purpose, and skill.
If only, if only
I could capture such a hawk
Train and bend
That beauty and skill
To do the bidding of my will.
Sent forth from my hand
In a powerful surge of wings,
Pummeling air,
Finding the perfect draught of air
To glide upon,
Turning, searching for prey,
Then sighting her trophy, her prize,
Sweeping down, a beat of wings,
A shift of body,
Talons extended,
What seems a pause,
A slowing,
Talons snatching,
Squeezing, sinking into a snake’s skin,
Wings beat, once, twice,
A cry as she lifts her body
And her limp prize,
Upon the air to glide,
Turning homeward,
The purity of her purpose,
A dance upon the air,
Done.
If only, if only
From my hand could fly
Such beautiful purity of purpose.
The Rabbit
A rabbit stilled,
Motionless, as if frozen
In the summer grass
Only her nose twitches, flares
The scent of wrongness,
Just a touch upon the air
And she knew
Only flight carried safety
Flight, the right choice to make
But she could stand only statue still
And standing so, the trap sprung
Steel teeth clamping down,
Slicing through skin,
Chewing through chunks of muscle
As she struggled,
Daring not to scream
As screams would bring the predators
This she knew too well.
The trap now biting into bone,
Her struggles stopped.
Her panting calmed.
Her head rested upon the grass.
One eye looked to a cloudless sky.
She prayed for strength to chew
Through bone.
Ten in Ten
Ten hurricanes in ten weeks,
Or so says CNN,
North Korea and Iran
Could be shaking hands
If it comes to WWIII
California is burning
Vegas is still hurting
Puerto Rico has little
In the way of food and water
While Trump signs yet
Another executive order
Could nearly turn an atheist
Into a person of faith
But you know what they say,
Everyone prays in the end.
After Eruption
Rend the earth again
Tear, rip through miles of rock and soil
Till the swollen, rounded,
core lies exposed
Bubbling, glowing,
Sputtering out
Reaching tendrils of itself.
Note the flow,
Time the pulses of heat,
Beating with undulating life seen and unseen.
Then watch the viscous liquid cool,
Solidifying against the pain
Of each cold breath you expel
Stilling the beat of life.
The transformation to cold, hard stone
Within the earth’s crust
As thus,
A mother’s heart,
Torn open once too often,
Stops.
Truth
What truth is there but this?
Contained within the sand, wind,
An inky blue sapphire sea
Watching whales and seals play
As they sing their songs of joy
I listen
Their language so foreign to me
A vocabulary of rejoicing
In all that God has made
I can neither interpret nor define
Within this human construct
That it seems God forgot
Yet I seek to know
What they say
Of love
Of grief
Of play
Of joy
In the Flutter of Wings
In the morning light
I watched the hummingbird
In the butterfly garden
When a monarch stopped by too
What a spectacle and spectrum of wings
These two do present
Feeding upon the nourishment here
The Monarch, a slow, tender flutter
The hummingbird, a battering blur of the air
In this spectrum of movement
Is there some secret knowledge,
A truth they seek to share
Differing by vast degrees
Of the same elemental force
Against the air
The aloneness within the movement
A thing that cannot be shared
For I have never seen
Either fly in tandem
With another of their kind
The journey to this garden
Each one took alone
Each seeking the same nectar
Each hungering
Yet alone in the seeking
Is there something profound
They wish to say
With each flutter and flap of wing?
Or is the message simple and concise?
Yes, perhaps it is just this—
We each journey in the seeking
Alone.
Hearing The Mermaids Sing 