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Owls of Springtime

1/31/2016

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I wrote this several years ago (early 1990's) for The Art of Living.
​  
         I stand in a patch of moonlight opened by the fall of a live oak that grew in the too soft soil of the island. The moon is pale in comparison to its cousin the sun, so the opening is bathed in shadowy half-light.
            Human eyes adjust remarkably well to this pale luminescence. My trained eye picks out the individual branches of the live oaks and red maples; even the Spanish moss draped over the branches is revealed in the moonlight.
            Night vision is clear but fades to shades of gray, like a black and white photograph. The night world is one of sharpness and clarity, but without color.
            Beyond the island stretches the water and cypress world of Okefenokee swamp. Maps tell me that this water world has boundaries, but my senses tell a different story. My eyes and ears tell me that I could get in a canoe and travel forever, and at the end of that journey the swamp would go on.
            In early March the cypress are already green with new growth. The maples are in bloom with their particular red flowers and the light barely penetrates to the water. American poet James Weldon Johnson used a land much like this as an analogy for the darkness present before the creation of the sun. He referred to that time as “…blacker than a hundred midnights down in a cypress swamp.”
            Out on the swamp no movement is discernable. No bull gators bellow their amorous intentions this late in the spring. No heron is spooked from its roost with such hoarse squawking to make me believe that the ghosts of nearby Billy’s Island have come to life.
            I step back from the clearing, keenly aware of the incomparable alertness of the nighttime creatures. The wondering raccoon needs no flashlight to find the remnants of our evening meal. The owls in the treetop have seen and heard our small party before we even think of looking for them. How many times have I cursed a missing tent stake, despite my good night vision, only to find it beside my tent in the morning, not four inches from the wooden stake I cut from my firewood as a substitute? An owl has no trouble seeing the mouse it searches out for dinner. A fox has no trouble following the trail of a bob white or a rabbit. Humans alone seem limited in their sensory abilities at this time of day.
            The sense that I most associate with nighttime though is hearing. The crickets chirp, the tree frogs trill and the pig frogs grunt. I cup my hands beside my open mouth and softly hoot into the darkness. So my mentor did before me and so his before him. With a low call at first, I imitate the eight syllable call of the barred owl. As I increase the volume, an owl answers in the distance, and then another. The woods are home to a nesting pair, defending their territory from me, the intruder.
            Owls are made that way. They will not tolerate any strangers wandering into their territory. The island has just enough mice, voles, and cotton rats to support them and one year’s progeny. The hoot of an intruder is a query of a traveler looking for a home. The answer is the equivalent of “scram.”
            Later that night I awaken. Something has stirred the owls in the 3:00 AM darkness. Always vigilant, the pair defends their island home.
 
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Rain

1/28/2016

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Published in The Weekly Avocet

​Like a love poem that fills the heart to overflowing
rain covers the mountain just after the New Year.
Murmuring rivulets dampen once dry leaves,
intersect paths and muddy trails,
muddy shoes and trouser legs.
I plunge through fecund mud and leaves,
become a mud man devoted to sylvan gods.
 
Glen Falls becomes a roaring torrent,
deceives my ears.
Thinking it close, I forge ahead.
The cascade below the fallsa booming choir.
Bases and contraltos reverberate from hickory and oak.
 
I bow before the splendor,
prepare to endure cold days ahead,
anticipate Equinox rebirth.

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Ice

1/13/2016

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Published in The Weekly Avocet
 
Like James Whitcomb Riley, I too admire
those days when “The frost is on the pumpkin,”
but pumpkin days have come and gone
and I have had my fill of ice and frost.
I don my boots, protect my feet from ice
which could slice my face if I should fall.
I cross the crust over new snow
to feeders where birds left four toed tracks
three forward, one back, anticipated
my gift of seeds to crack in beak.
Fruit eaters get no sustenance from me,
subsist on poison ivy berries,
and other fruits, frozen on shrubs.
Woodland mice snuggle safe within their dens
beneath leaves and ice. They feed from
miniature stacks of hay like beehive hairdos.
Though highway crews have salted roads
and shovels scrapped ice from drives,
it clings tight to twig and branch.
Mountain trees fill with light. Radiant,
they catch the sun and burn with ice.

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Writer's Block

1/10/2016

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January 10,
On writers block: I don’t really understand what the phrase "writer's block" really means. I have writing that pours out of me all the time. The real issue is getting it all down on paper. I have a full time job, serve on the board of directors of two different not for profit organizations (as vice president in one case), and edit a newsletter for a third. The only block to my writing is finding time to do it. Nevertheless, I have two boxes full of notebooks, many of which contain poems and stories I have never typed up. 

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