A snoop amid the boughs
beady-eyed, proctorial,
sizes up my gardening
with aspect territorial.
Category Archives: Animals
June 7.20: Coping
Sunday brunch al fresco
never better was
with family all decked out
in finest feather and fuzz.
June 5.20: Coping
In sonorous melancholy
from twilight until dawn
continuo of bagpipe
goes on and on and on.
His one note is perfected
in infinite repeat
in melody deficient
but heartfelt in its bleat.
He cannot sleep for want
of something he calls for
determinedly insistent
it just takes one croak more.
June 3.20: Coping
In solemn grace
amid death’s drums
something beautiful
this way comes.
With thanks to Shakespeare
and to whatever benevolence
sent the swans to the pond.
In no way, dear reader, do I intend this to be some saccharine comment
about how things aren’t as bad as they seem:
things ARE as bad as they seem.
But sometimes there’s a moment of reprieve.
May 12.20: Coping
On toothpick legs
with eye bright black
in marshy grass
he stalked a snack.
Deliberate his movements
just to make me mad:
if I took five hundred pictures,
five-hundred-one were bad.
I think this is a new one for the pond, dear reader!
Maybe a sandpiper?
May 7.20: Coping
In song to the moon
at end of day
Robin chirps
his roundelay,
the lyrics rising
plaintively:
What fools, what fools
these mortals be!
OK, dear reader, not all. Not all.
Thanks to Shakespeare for his ever-timely words,
and thanks to Robin for holding still.
April 27.20: Coping
Sometimes it’s the same old pond
and you are too much in it,
so you rest your belly in the grass
and contemplate a minute.
To step away and try to see
the whole of anything,
it helps to have a grassy spot
and quiet in your wing.
April 18.20: Coping
Philosopher bird,
patient, still,
laser focused
by stoic will,
ignoring slime
between his toes
as raindrops trickle
from his nose.
Waiting is
perfected art
for pondside menu
à la carte.
April 15.20: Coping
Yesterday was awful
it started freezing cold
news blizzards swirled around me
I felt beat up and old.
The only thing to do
before I oxidized
was check the windswept pond
for life more civilized.
It seemed I had new neighbors,
two couples, more’s the merry;
I think they’re blue-winged teals —
how very salutary!
Do you know, dear reader?
Am I becoming duck-savvy?
I grieve to say my buffleheads have not come back.
April 14.20: Coping
With daredevil nimble impunity
impelled by springtime jejunity
he apparently thinks
his aerial high-jinks
are granted gravity immunity.
