Early morning's glow
Revealing misty dragon's breath
O're bank and water's flow
Air now thick with music
Peepers' song give way
Chipmunk, bird crescendos rise
Sandpiper snatches prey
Great blue heron spreads her wings
Magnificent in flight
Invisibly she cloaks herself
Stealth fisher out of sight
Sweet scented mingled forest life
The rotting tree, wild rose
Perfumed air with fragrance rare
Within my spirit glows
Great oak fallen in the night
Spans white water wide
Up and out o're rapid spray
Betwixt two banks I stride
HIgh above this rocky roar
I perch with dangled feet
Tossing crystals from my pouch
With thanks for River's treat
Time is unimportant
Morning's holy bliss
Flow on ye mighty river
No longer mine to fish
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Comments: 21
I just penned this an hour ago..... and got to read it on the air for WCOM, as it was relevant to the topic of pollution/citizen responsiblilty. Mercury in the fish prevents me from eating, and I fear for the heron as well.
Enough lamentation, time to go to work!
Have a groovy day!
I just got in my e-mail a warning from Care2...
"You are at the grocery store and decide to supplement your diet with some tasty fish, loaded with those healthy Omega-3 fatty acids. There are so many fish options to choose from: salmon, swordfish, tilapia, tuna (albacore canned). Do you know which to avoid based on high mercury levels?
Answer: swordfish and tuna. As reported on PBS, a 45 lb child ingesting 6 ounces of swordfish per week is exceeding the EPA's recommended mercury limit by 11 times! For tuna, the child is ingesting 4 times the allowed amount."
This was a time in my life when I learned about nature the way it should be learned. Back in those days,as far as I knew, everybody on the planet lived close to a "crick"; played in it, built dams in it, and fell in into it on a regular basis.
Your poem makes me think about a particular dam we built in that "crick" one summer. You might say we over-engineered it, seein' as it flooded out Old Pop Rang's vegetable garden.
The community service we served ( administered by the community, not the law) as punishment was having to dismantle the dam while Old Pop Rang watched us.
Every sight and smell you describe is swirling around inside my head as I type. Thanks for the memories.
I'm glad you and others are remembering fond times at the water.
We are lucky to have so wonderful a planet.
Many of the fields and woods I enjoyed in my youth are now just bland housing developments. A favorite place to walk my dog, with woods and stream is in its final phase of so called development.
Thank goodness for Nature Conservancy, which protects from this where it can.
A Late Walk by Robert Frost
When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.
And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words
A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.
I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.