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?
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.
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.
An introvert
isn’t hurt
so much by isolation.
But even so
this I know
1
is a poor population.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
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.
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.
The heron and I
were watching the news,
trying to fathom
debatable views.
He couldn’t find words
but just shrugged instead,
like me, reduced to a
scratch of the head.
