Entries from June 2008

Embracing Clutter

June 30, 2008

I finally found the long-lost image file this morning. Whew! After the cd was finally on it’s merry way to Dallas, we celebrated making the deadline with much a needed road trip to nearby special places. Chorusing Veery and hundreds of exquisitely bright dragonfly wings soothed our frazzled selves. My camera gear got a very […]

Save a Tree or Two, Buy a Used Book

June 29, 2008

I’m usually a somewhat organized person. In the past, if I needed to find something, most generally I could have it in my hands within minutes. That’s all changed. Although I’ve sorted, filed, packed away and gave away many items that I no longer use since my illness, I’m still swamped. […]

The Summer Day

June 25, 2008

The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with […]

Singing a Consolation Song

June 24, 2008

We visted our old stomping grounds this afternoon while downstate. For many years we lived near Saginaw Bay and spent countless hours at Nayanquing Point Wildlife Area, an incredibly beautiful natural refuge with hundreds of species of birds, including the oldest colony of Yellow-headed Blackbirds in Michigan. Viewing them in the past required a extremely […]

A King Among Birds

June 22, 2008

‘When we think of the kingbird, even if it be winter here in the north, and he is for the time thousands of miles away in the Tropics, we picture him as we see him in summer, perched on the topmost limb of an apple tree, erect in his full-dress suit–white tie, shirt-front, and waistcoat–upright, […]

The Wild Iris

June 19, 2008

The Wild Iris
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending […]