His nose tucked neatly
under his wing,
slumbering peacefully
in the cradle of spring,
dreaming, no doubt,
of tasty pond goo,
he isn’t aware
he’s a one-duck zoo.
The youth of the pond
in rapt exploration
are staring at him
in awed contemplation,
trying to figure
just how in the heck
came a backwards head
on a wrong-way neck.
“Tell it slant,”
the poet wrote.
My camera heard
the cryptic quote
and ever since
has suffered no guilt
to record the world
in vertigo’d tilt.
But perhaps this is poet’s
wisdom elemental:
truth is best known
in bits incremental.
And maybe the camera
senses a duty
to say same applies
to earth’s transient beauty.
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
with explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
— Emily Dickinson
My belated tribute to Poetry Month and Earth Day.
Also my argument that it’s not my fault when my photos are cattywampus; it’s my camera in cahoots with Emily Dickinson.
And, yes, dear reader, I sense the irony: Truth is stuck in this country’s throat right now. Is Emily’s notion of slowly revealed Truth the same as truth pried out like an abscessed tooth? (I guess I can’t help rhyming.)
In more-or-less spring,
the gardener tends
to detritus of winter,
trapped odds and ends
stubbornly stuck,
clumped and between,
slimy and gross,
deep down in the green.
With whiff of the past
distinctive effluvium,
removing last year’s
exhausted exuvium,
the gardener can come
upon things unexpected,
like a snack long forgotten
and song resurrected.
What torture, what misery,
what shock instantaneous,
that summer camp ditty,
sudden, spontaneous!
Now it’s stuck in my head —
I’ll be kind and not say it
else you too, dear reader,
should be doomed to replay it.
If you, dear reader, are also a fan of Dan Antion’s blog, you too will be wondering if Smokey scampered off to Indiana with this peanut and then skedaddled back to Dan for more.
When you splat on the landscape
like a blob of red paint,
you have to admit
a chameleon you ain’t.
Camouflage isn’t
your thing, feathered flame;
nice try, but hide-and-seek
just isn’t your game.
Curled and lifeless remnants
of verdant summer past,
piled in brown haphazard
as wool to winter’s blast,
give way now to surgings
of supple green newborn,
to Bacchanalian clusters
and blast of sunny horn.
The party hats of spring
donned by stem and twig
declare the end of brown
and bounce in happy jig.
And now my consternation
in querulous note to you:
why does such depth of purple
show here as a beautiful blue?
Ah, the mysteries of photography. You must take my word for it, dear reader: the blue is really purple, and the golden yellow combined with that rich purple is hurting my arm as I pat myself on the back for transplanting these bulbs a couple years ago: the gardener’s gloat. (Ah. I hear at least one of you thinking you’ll get my gloat.)
The thundering herd emerges,
nests and burrows shake;
Miami ain’t got nothin’
on the partying pond’s spring break.
Indifferent to the heron,
careless of robin and jay,
they hog the warm pondside
elbowing squirrels away.
Hedonistic revelers,
greeting glad springtide,
Mama most the manic,
getting the kids outside.
Burning bush
in fire of green
flames to faith
what was unseen.
For weeks now, dear reader, I have been in a woeful writer’s slump. It’s amazing how many words one can grind out and then trash. But the morning sun blazed through these baby leaves as if to say….well, something; I don’t know what. Maybe it will say something to you too.
St. Patrick’s Day isn’t in everyone’s tradition, but it’s in mine, so a very happy St. Patrick’s Day to you from Maureen O’Hern! With green!
Soon green
this white,
this cold Now,
a sleep,
a breath held,
a frozen song,
a stillness
chiding me,
impatient
for Something Else
when I too should stop
so I too can bear green.
“At the end of the day”
you hear people say;
it’s kind of a trend
to invoke the day’s end.
Clichés are so born,
and now I am torn:
how else can I write
of incoming night?
The end of the day
is about shadow play,
puffs pink and white
in slanted late light,
their tippy-toe stretch
to yawn and to catch
that pearly soft ray
at the end of the day.
The little boy favored ducks,
he thought them very nifty;
in motley flock they come each spring
now the little boy is fifty.
With thanks to my gardener son, Dennis,
for the photo op.
For him, a proper yard will always wear a duck.
Oddments 