For the Last Carolina Parakeet
As published in the literary magazine, Number One, Gallatin, Tennessee

I imagine the loneliness of your aviary
there at the Cincinnati Zoo where your
predecessor, the last Passenger Pigeon,
flew off to oblivion just a few years earlier.
One voice is not a choir.
 
You were part of a social species,
descending by the thousands,
on fields to consume cockleburs,
or orchards for luscious fruits.
One voice is not a choir.
 
Some labelled you a pest
and pursued with shotguns.
Audubon noticed your species
in decline even in his bygone days.
One voice is not a choir.
 
No welcoming song of your fellows
greeted your waning days. Does your
skin adorn a museum, just as your
ancestors’ feathers adorned ladys’ hats?
On voice is not a choir.
 
It saddens me to think my adopted home
of Tennessee once knew the calls and colors
of a native parrot. One scientist titled
an article about your kin, “Forever Gone.”
No voices remain in the choir. 

Erosion: Essays of Undoing
Terry Tempest Williams
Reviewed by Ray Zimmerman

5 Star Review - The book is well written in a literary nonfiction style
Terry Tempest Williams is devoted to the preservation of public lands. She mourns the recent undoing of their protection. In the final section tells us that the time for anger is past, it is time for healing. She sees healing as restoration. She reveals a few bright spots of healing the landscape near the end of the book.

Family plays a part of this book, as is true for most of her books. She mourns the death of her brother Dan. He relationship with her father and deceased mother and grandmothers are also significant factors in the narrative. She speaks of her Mormon upbringing and her response to the Church's views and policies toward women, as well as non-white, and non-binary persons.

Bears Ears National Monument appears periodically in the book, but is ever present in the subtext. She documents efforts to preserve the area going back to Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes (Served 1933 to 1946). Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall picked up the mission. President Obama finally preserved it as a National Monument in the final days of his administration. Donald Trump gutted the monument early in his administration. Williams mocks Trump's statement that he was giving the land back to the American people, stating that they are public lands and one cannot give us what is already ours.

AS Published in the literary journal Number One, Gallatin, TN
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Wall
Copyright Ray Zimmerman, 2019
​
1.Robert frost and his neighbor repair their stone wall boundary.
The neighbor declares the results good.
Frost contemplates a new poem.
 
2.  Migrating Red-winged Blackbirds impale themselves
on slats erected along the U.S – Mexico border.
The Department of Homeland Security
declares the nation safe from blackbirds.
 
3. Manchu invaders encounter the Great Wall of China;
proceed with their war of conquest.
 
4. Thanks to the popular band, Pink Floyd,
we are all just bricks in the wall.
 
5. President Ronald Reagan stands on Berlin Soil,
says, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
 
6. President Thomas Jefferson assures
the Baptist committee of Danbury, Connecticut
that they will be free to worship as they see fit
and not subject to regulation by the Calvinist majority.
He proclaims a wall of separation between church and state.
 
7.  Presidential candidate Donald Trump promises
to build a wall along the Mexican border;
fails to mention that construction began years ago.
 
8. Three Little Pigs build walls of straw, sticks, and brick.
Big Bad Wolf holds barbeque.
The third pig declines the invitation.
 
9. The Speaker of the House refuses to let the President
address the nation from the house chambers,
There must be a wall enforcing the separation of powers.
 
10. Jesus extols the value of building walls on rock foundations
advises against building on sand.
 
11. The descendants of Isaac gather at the Western Wall;
offer prayers and lamentations:
hope for the rebuilding of the Temple.
 
12. Followers of Mohammed gather within the walls
of the Dome of the Rock;
Pray for preservation of the mosque. 
 
13. Hacker interface penetrates firewalls at will,
takes down Fortune 500 web sites. 

This poem appeared in the Fall - 2019 issue of The Avocet. 

​Great Horned Owl
 
In Birds of America, their visage seems fierce.
In person, these birds can be much worse.
 
I have heard them called the terror of the skies.
They eat anything that swims, runs, or flies.
 
When they move in, other owls get quiet.
You see, they are on the great horned’s diet.
 
Neither eagle nor heron is safe from their grasp.
The owl eats their chicks, quick as an asp.
 
These birds build no nests, find a hollow tree,
or take over another’s nest rent free.
 
Through cold and snow, owl chicks grow fast.
They fly in March; the nesting is past.
 
The skunk is among their items of prey.
You will want to avoid them the following day.

Spider
Written 10/2/19
Ray Zimmerman

This morning I shared my porch table with a small gray spider, perhaps a quarter inch long. The spider was fully formed, as they are even at hatching. I am tempted to say that it was an adult, given the time of year, but the unseasonably hot days of September make the statement less certain.

The spider seemed indisposed to stay, crossing to the far end. When I interposed my pen in the path, the arachnid raised the foremost pair of legs for a tactile examination. Not interested, the spider turned back toward me.

When I placed an open book in the path, the spider climbed up onto the page, which provided a map of the world. Uninterested in the land masses of North and South America, the intrepid spider crossed the Pacific Ocean, north to south.

Not satisfied with this an adventure, the spider crossed to the opposing page which held a map of the world illustrated with time zones. Continuing its southerly movement, the spider followed the Hawaii/Tahiti time zone which includes a bit of Alaska. The huge land mass of Alaska crosses three times zones, a feat in which it is aided by the convergence of the zones at their northern limits. Greenland likewise crosses three zones, but neither offers competition for Russia, which crosses nine, sharing time zones with Cairo, Baghdad, Dubai, Karachi, Dhaka, Bangkok, Beijing, Tokyo, and Canberra.

My spider showed interest in none of these distant lands, simply traveling across Hawaii and Tahiti. It did not even enter the adjacent Alaska Time Zone or the Samoa Time Zone. I suppose there is something to be said for singleness of purpose.

The Hawaii/Tahiti time zone is, by the way, eleven hours behind Greenwich Mean Time and one hour ahead of Samoa. So far as I could tell, the spider was unimpressed with these facts or the recent travels.  Some people say Grandmother Spider crossed the world and brought back the sun. In that case, I suppose a bit of globe-trotting is not so unusual for a creature so small.  

When I interposed my pen again, this spider happily accepted a ride down to the floor of the porch and went about the business of being a spider.  I felt no revulsion at the spider’s exoskeleton, so different from my endoskeleton, or its venomous bite by which it captures prey. I thought of its similarities to a tick, a scorpion, and a crab, all distant relatives of the spider, with which I avoid contact, but without ill will. They fascinate me and I wish for more time to observe them.

​
 

Satellites
 
When it comes to love, birds take a satellite approach.
Bobolink males give 100 percent of their hunting efforts
to their first nest and their first mate.
 
A satellite female may appear, and then another.
Each builds her own nest,
surreptitiously mates with the male. 
Each subsists on twenty-five percent of the male’s efforts.
The original nest gets fifty percent.  
Later arriving females may receive as little at ten percent of the hunter’s results.
 
By contrast, some warbler species have satellite males.
A strong singer quickly attracts a mate and egg laying commences.
Satellite males build nests surrounding the strong singer’s territory.
Other females attracted to the strong singers voice nest with satellite males.
Twenty-five to fifty percent of the nestlings in satellite broods
are related to the strong singer at the center of the action.
Birds are not at all like humans.

​

​Primal Number
© Ray Zimmerman 2019
 
In an ancient high-rise no longer prime office space,
a tattoo parlor adorns the first floor, sits opposite a shop
where a weaver works at her loom; awaits customers.
 
High atop the building, an unplanned resident builds a nest.
The peregrine feels hunger, jets above a decorative fountain
where a man, dashing home from work gives a wistful whistle,
feeds popcorn to pigeons whose stomachs are better accustomed to grain.
 
The pigeons dare not fly for the falcon descends at 200 miles per hour,
slams a fist into an unwary bird who tumbles to earth.
 
Falcon does not hesitate to rend flesh for she has nestlings to feed.
 
The tattoo artist and the weaver see the falcon, contemplate new artsy designs. 

​Iron Moon
November 13, 2016
© Ray Zimmerman
 
Last night a moon red as hot iron
on a blacksmith’s forge
shone through smoky haze,
threatened the city’s skyline.
 
Trees on every nearby mountain ignited
like strike anywhere matches,
blaze spreading from tree to tree.
 
Headlights of automobiles
bounced along highways,
shone through ash and soot.
 
An arsonist confessed to setting
three of the fires.
The press carried no report of his motives.
 
The insane dance of a burning world
where once the earth was green. 

My most recent project is a bibliography of selected works by Robert Sparks Walker. Here is some of the introductory material. 

Introduction
 
Robert Sparks Walker is best known as the founder of the Chattanooga Audubon Society and for his foresight in setting aside their Elise Chapin Wildlife Sanctuary, popularly known as Audubon Acres. Chattanooga Audubon’s acquisition of the Maclellan Island property during Walker’s lifetime is sometimes added as a brief footnote to that achievement. His literary career began 44 years before the founding of Chattanooga Audubon but is rarely mentioned. The author hopes to preserve a record of Walker’s achievements as a poet, editor, publisher and author, and to provoke new interest his published works.

​Significance as a Writer
 
Robert Sparks Walker began writing freelance articles while still in high school. At age 22, he acquired fifty percent ownership of the Southern Fruit Grower magazine in 1900. He served as editor and publisher of that magazine until its sale in 1921. He served as Nature Editor of Flower Grower 1923 – 1934 and had a weekly nature column in The Chattanooga Times beginning in 1933.
 
His first published book, Anchor Poems, appeared in 1925, followed by a second book of verse, My Fathers Farm, in 1927. Walker had a growing reputation as an author and editor when, at age 53, he published Torchlights to the Cherokees (Macmillan, 1931). The Pulitzer Prize nomination for that book accelerated his career. He spent several weeks examining relevant materials in the files of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Andover-Harvard Theological Library) to complete Torchlights to the Cherokees.
 
Walker followed Torchlights to the Cherokees with a novel, a collection of short stories, two additional books of poetry, and a series of booklets promoting the City of Chattanooga and economic growth in the city and the surrounding area. He returned to book length nonfiction with Lookout: The Story of a Mountain which begins with the geology of the mountain and continues through human habitation.
 
His final book length work, As the Indians Left It includes charming stories of childhood life on the farm and documents the early days of the Chattanooga Audubon Society and the sanctuary. Local historians have disputed his statements about the history of the property and the log cabin, and artifacts related to Native American occupation of the land, but not Walker’s significance as a conservationist and author. The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation gives an annual award for lifetime achievement in conservation which is named the Robert sparks Walker Award.
 
Walker also hosted a weekly radio show. He produced “illustrated slide talks,” loaned to schools and civic groups, and helped produce at least one nature film. 

  ​Messages
 
In the days of instant messages, there are no editors.
The reader takes the place of writer and editor.
Other readers add their comments immediately.
Advice columns are unnecessary.
Readers pose questions in open forums.
Does anyone know a good auto mechanic?
Where should I shop for hand-made jewelry?
Friends and strangers offer advice.  All sources are 100 percent reliable.