A squirrel fills his hidey hole with food as I fill my notebooks, lest paucity find us wanting to fight our battles.
Pastoral Pit Stop
I search the morning
For life's colors and textures
To stir heart and soul
Beneath cedar trees
Blue-gray as dawn with a vail
A fawn bumps its mom
A jay swoops screaming
At a defiant squirrel
Who believes and runs
No one wins the game--
The dynamic panoply--
No one loses it
The notebook is full
The inspiration enough
So I join life's work
To render in rhymes
Words that resonate the truth
Of deer munching grass
© 2006 Jim Ross
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Comments: 21
All of it is wonderful
A wise, mindful poem that like the best of A.R. Aamons not only shows us how to "be" in nature, but also instructs us with carefully chosen particular as to what "nature" really is.
You're clearly a deep feeling poet with a great sense of ecological awareness, Jim. I look forward to reading more of your work.
I'm reminded of a story by Ambrose Bierce (I can't remember the title but I believe it's in his "In the Midst of Life") about a man who finds a beautiful woman in a cave but whenever he questions her, she disappears.
Perhaps I'll be able to look closer at the muse as I write more, I don't know. Right now I just write and hope she stays.
I think I'll make a sampler with your sage advice on it. It's so easy to overblow things when we write.
". . . one word at a time, carefully chosen, and we'll have a story of such magnitude as to leave them breathless!"
I can't remember who said it, but it's not a shabby goal, eh.
Everytime I sit down to write I hope to do that. It's fearsome at times, but then I remember Don Quixote de la Mancha! Let 'er rip!
I like your stuff, too. Ain't life grand!