Picture of the Day

crepuscular sunrise

we're almost beyond that now

sassafras, honey, and whiskey
i feel the tree, bee, fire
swim down my throat
and fill me with something strange
the ingestion of connections where synapses don't lie
I'm watching wind whip in autumnal tumbles
the trees shake and rake fingers against crisp sky
i can see ghosts swimming in water vapor
billowing shapes of chaos and particulate
what was once underground and off limits
haunts epochal memory bank
but wait

we're almost beyond that now
we are entering the realm of dreams
of nectar skimming verily
touching our eyes
and wetting thirsty tongue
i can taste the seasons shift
trees tilt with gusty chill
we branch and branch and branch
roots stretching into past
so we may grow and bud
into forbidden fruit of tomorrow
for we yearn to return
where we can never be
and i wonder
what sort of strange pollinator
will be drawn to our call
and spread the seed
that shall sit throughout winter
like reverie of persimmon
through the brittle
bone shaking cold
waiting
waiting its turn
to push forth and shine to the alluring cry
of the tree of life returning
slightly changed
in new form
from our descent with modification.

the moon is not the mistress

The moon is not the mistress
of misconstrued desire
She is lonely sun flare firmly ricocheted
towards eyes of want
The moon is not the mistress
She is the mother of atavistic yearning
She pulls just soft enough
to remind us
Yes, it is night
Yet we see
Riparian cleft
where night winds blow
While we move as water
Clinging to the edge.

I feel the friction

Sitting on the swing
a little creaky
a lot of memories
watching that great hydrogen inferno
slowly set across the Piedmont
I kind of like the way these
crumbling barns show the
contrast of fading hues
of our farming roots
against the hum of expansion
the lapping tongue of progression
like rough cut brush strokes against
this crisp, colorful creation
I feel the friction
between this changing age
like plate tectonics, something's got to give
because I grew up snapping snaps
and popping butterbeans
chasing tadpoles and
spitting watermelon seeds
picking berries off the vine
and making love in the fields
where fireflies dance and sing in
optical glamor
but the fields are fallow now
burnt offering of fossil fuel sacrifice
we're forgetting the songs of the woods
songs of common sense
psalms of decency
this is a concrete jungle
moving in waves
across a plastic page

I saw the beauty of life
in the fragility of a thirsty hummingbird
hovering with just enough grace to purse
my lips into a curve
sitting on the swing, warm summer evening
sipping down on our concoction of atonement and actuality
I can taste the simplicity and languor
begging
yearning to return.

Photo of the Day

Sunrise from Round Bald, Tennessee on the Appalachian Trail

untitled poem

Trees sway
As grasses to an ant’s sneeze
Mountains flow
Like rain droplets in sand
Patterns and waves
Dictate our landscape
As well as us all
Spirals and crevices
Create our form
Trees sway as do we.

photo of the day

an osprey, the skilled fisherman, takes off from her nest platform along Taskinas Creek
York River State Park, Va

Watching ourselves in the night sky

Sometimes at night
I like to lay out on the cool summer grass
Or an outcropping with just
The right fold for my body
And see how far I can stare
Into the translucent aether
Filtering my view
Into the celestial canopy

Water vapor and dust
Ancestral flames
Strings and waves of vibrating
Frequencies bending nicely
To the hands of this expanding
Imagination of consciousness
And reality we all draw
With our actions, dollars
And dreams

And I’ve never been able to see
To the end
It’s stretching out
Though we move closer
Which confuses this wide eyed
Country boy

We are bending timescales
I’m watching the revolution
Spinning around fixed point
I can feel myself moving at speed
If I calm my mind.
This rate of change is unruly

Sometimes at night
I like to lay out on the cool summer grass
Or an outcropping with just
The right fold for my body
And see how far I can stare
And remember the dreams
Of a child who yearns to return
The inertia of progression of thought
Acclimating from the asinine
Into dirt and the sanguine.

Summertime

Summer is upon us, we are close to maximum tilt and long days as we in the Northern Hemisphere begin tilting back away from the Sun after the recently passing Solstice. That means rocking chairs and sun tea, fire flies and thunderstorms, blueberries and bears, and sanguine nights.



Come on in and sit a spell.



a beautiful lily blooming on the first day of Summer



sunset at Hanging Rock Raptor Observatory, VA/WV border




sunrise at Hanging Rock Raptor Observatory



fog in the valley



sunset at Kelly's Knob, Va




the powerful Reishi mushroom of the Appalachians, Ganoderma tsugae
more info



sunset at Kelly's Knob, Va



Flaming Azalea's in all their colorful glory

nights like these

This is the velocity of thought
On a lax night of passing
The winds are swarming with wisps of pleasantries
And I can feel the slow, viscous breeze
shoot the gap of these synaptic clefts
Tickling as they go
Humid night of May giving way to June
Through slightly past full moon swooning across stillness
Approaching firefly dance awaits
There is a slight sweat on my back
I smile at the stickiness
Because I remember winter
And the coldness inside
I always liked the heat
With a smooth languor about it
On nights like these

Photo(s) of the Day

Orange poppies

Fear and Loathing on a Wet and Oil Spewing Memorial Day Weekend

Editors Note: I decided to crank on the news and submerge myself for a bit. This is not gonzo journalism nor is it trying to be, though fear and loathing feel very visceral on this Memorial Day Weekend.

Patriotism and global markets, the parts that make the whole, and weird visions of vehicles underwater. This is where we left off, a tad shade short of whimsical and a tad too far past irrational to quite understand anything logically. This is the age of unreason.

...a slow and silent stream,
Lethé, the River of Oblivion, rolls
Her wat'ry labyrinth... ~Milton, Paradise Lost, II

It seems we just keep hearing about this awful oil spill off of our Gulf Coast. It’s been 40 days or so now. 40 long days and it appears it won’t end or stop anytime soon. How far are you willing to go, how close to the edge do we really want to take this awful beast that we are losing our grip on. The reins slip and the slick has been let out of the geologic bag. We’re becoming saturated with talk about how another measure fails. How the anger is rising, anger focused largely close to home in the gulf with a fading radius where only some of us are really feeling it up here in Virginia, where drilling has been put on hold for now. It wasn’t close enough to the Chesapeake Bay. This time.

"We are not near the end."
~ Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano

Deepwater Horizon started drilling on February 15, 2010. They finished around April 17, the explosion happening 3 days later, killing 11 crew members. Some tried to say it was eco-sabotage, occurring on the anniversary of Earth Day, a convoluted plot of outlandish proportions. Deep sea robots tried to close the well. We hear from the Department of Interior it may take 3 months, a 90-ton containment dome capped the gusher and the hole froze from Burning ice, methane hydrates. Stuck a straw into it, spill cam pops on and who knows if it’s looping or not, all hope is put into a ‘top kill’ that works temporarily and fails while another massive wobbling 22 mile plume is found. Top hats and variations of containment domes are en route.

Let us not forget a third of the world’s dispersants purchased. Out of sight out of mind, as well as out of reach of the magical booms missing the underwater currents dragging the newly bonded oils across the seafloor and working their way to our coasts unguarded, rising up the food chain, eventually into our synergistic stews of chemical filled bodies.

As long as the claims for peaceful atomic bomb surgeons aren’t allowed as some Russians are speaking of as well as American bomb scientists.

"Paint me a cavernous waste shore
Cast in the unstilled Cyclades,
Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks
Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.
~ T.S. Eliot

Hurricane season starts on the Atlantic tomorrow, swirling fears of an oil laden storm sweeping across the coast, hurling more than frog or fish this time. Warm ocean waters and the Gulf's tendency to produce mighty storms mix for the potential makings of a nasty storm surge.

I’m wondering why there hasn’t been more of an outcry against this disaster. We’re hearing some serious claims and scary predictions about what this could do to our economy, our national security, our health, our happiness. All of which stem from our ecosystems.

“A moratorium on drilling will be the economic blow that will kill us,“ said Charlotte Randolph, President of LaFourche Parish, worried about job loss. She doesn’t want the drilling to stop. People are saying some people rely on BP for the livelihoods. I guarantee more rely on clean air and water for their lives. It’s time to rethink the status quo. It’s time to man and woman up, dig our heels in, bite the bullet, and come up with some real solutions.

How will this effect offshore drilling in the near future? Seven Greenpeace activists wrote a message to everyone in oil asking an important question. Is the Arctic next?



“I don’t know what’s making people sick, but I don’t think it’s the food.” unknown

The first workers have begun to get nose bleeds and become sick, ones working close to where the dispersants were sprayed. The plume is growing at alarming rates. And it seems we have months before it may stop. Hidden hydrocarbons beneath the surface spreading along secret routes.

I find it very strange and a little eerie, closing in on sickening, when I think about the true volume of this. And I’m glad people like James Carville, a wise southerner and political assassin, is telling it how it is. So why are we not hearing more of a fuss from the general public? The fisherman are getting riled up, but not those that they feed.

"Dis President needs to tell BP I’m your daddy…" ~ James Carville

“We need nature to be fully alive: air, food, warmth, spiritual…We live as if nature is only needed to provide extras: paper, recreation, specialty foods, a job to provide money.
~Susan Griffin, Women and Nature, 1978

The wetlands will soak up a large portion of this mess. As well as many estuarine creatures we tend to consume. There’s a lot of blame and anger going towards BP right now. Like a social magnifier they are sucking up a lot of negativity from this accident that perhaps could have been prevented with proper safeguards drilling at such depths. I hear people say, “Isn’t it just awful.” Yes.

I think we are either accepting it as something out of our control or either we’re not becoming more enraged about it because of it’s seemingly invisible grip on us all. I’ve purchased gas at BP plenty of times over the years. Does that mean this is partially my fault as much as theirs? I am feeding demand after all. I think there in lies part of this problem.

This upends questions for the public, months of gushing, hopefully molding our ethos into a more realistic view that fossil fuels are not as ‘cheap’ as they are touted to be and these externalities are as real as our current situation.

Those sort of biting ticks at the back of your mind make some people uneasy, not quite ready to accept such awful truths, and instead, making some sort of detachment from it because nobody wants to believe this is just as much our fault as BP’s because we’re not demanding something better, cleaner, or safer.

If you’re asking does America’s future depend on oil, I would say we as a nation ought to be moving away from our deadly addiction to oil. Not only because of the damage it is doing to the Gulf but we are exporting, we are borrowing a billion dollars a day in our country. Mainly from nations that don’t share our values in order to import a billion dollars of oil from nations that don’t share our values, largely, and many that are downright hostile towards us.
~Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on CNN

Lets get it straight, we will burn oil for quite some time and nothing is going to change overnight, but we need to get the ball rolling on this transition that right now is stuck in the viscous old mindsets and profit driven throes of petroleum like dinosaurs in the tar sands, immobilized and covered by the source of our downfall.

There isn’t enough clarity within our social consciousness to envision something different than our current state of affairs. Another path. Yet. Oil is so inherently involved with our daily lives from vehicles, plastics, our homes, and our food. It’s hard to look at something with disdain when we’re so carelessly and covetously covered with it.



It’s just not the emotion jarring angst and empathy that we feel when we see baby sea turtles and birds covered in the dark toxic sludge. We gulp it down in small enough concentrations that we never really feel those ill effects right away, an invisible and addictive coating that we just can’t help but feed. And let us remind ourselves where most oil comes from, financing the other side of this decadent and depraved war that many of our brave soldiers are mixed up in now.

Or other forums of massive social and energy injustice, like a large amount of Shell’s oil. Nigeria and the Niger delta have been hit with oil spills nonstop, yet we here next to nothing about it.

"With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution." ~John Vidal

Even our ‘homegrown oil’ has very large risks and reasons why it is not a safe choice. The creed is greed. It’s much more sneaky and sly that way. It’s always in the subtleties, the details, the cunning warming hand of hard capitalism that lullabies us into some hypnotic trance of continued support and unwavering complacency.

That’s why there isn’t more of a public outcry. We're hooked. Because we feel powerless. Because we drove to work or the store between hearing the latest news about the continued gush of oil at a newer and higher rate or after the next step failed. What some would say are merely efforts to buy time and show some semblance of trying. Yes, they want to close the leak, but they seem to believe it won’t happen until the release valves are drilled, sometime in August, the worst possible outcome.



We’re so connected to it. It is all of our fault, and that’s something nobody wants to swallow. But we should. Could this catastrophe be enough to spark serious change? Or will it take more? And how much will we have to spoil our surroundings before we say enough is enough and the wheels of cleaner energy get serious backing from governments and research and development gets what it should.

"More than anything else, this economic and environmental tragedy –- and it's a tragedy -– underscores the urgent need for this nation to develop clean, renewable sources of energy. Doing so will not only reduce threats to our environment, it will create a new, homegrown, American industry that can lead to countless new businesses and new jobs.

...If nothing else, this disaster should serve as a wake-up call that it's time to move forward on this legislation. It's time to accelerate the competition with countries like China, who have already realized the future lies in renewable energy. And it's time to seize that future ourselves." ~President Obama at Deepwater BP Oil Spill Presidential Press Conference

Right now it seems China is much ahead of the United States in this front, and whoever gets the best foundation in clean energy technology established is going to dominate the global market within the next 50 years in that regard. Talk about national security.

"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal
Love leaves a memory no one can steal."
~ a gravestone in Ireland
VP Biden delivers remarks at Arlington National Cemetery

More than 300,000 people are buried at Arlington National Ceremony, one of the most somber places I've ever walked through. It's hard to walk through there without thinking about the blood and strife and fight that allow us the ease of life we have today. It makes me think we have a responsibility, a right to fulfill our continuance in a sane manner in honor and memory of the foundation before us. Sure we have a bloody and at times controversial history fraught with wrong doing, but at some point don’t we decide in our struggle to remain atop this clandestine version of king of the hill we ought to take the high road and try to remember what life with dignity and honor looks like amidst our perverted and warped lens of politics.

This is a solemn day, a day we remember all those that have died so we may live in the comforts of ease. Memorial Day makes me think about what so many have fought so hard to give us. Some idea of democracy, a place where hard work can get you somewhere. This isn't the land our grandparents grew up in. The sharpened teeth and claw of capitalism have bastardized democracy and our power structure into some sick choking spreading blob of wrathful facades, imperialism, and closed door deals settled over scotch and oily hands.

It is Memorial Day, a slight drizzle is falling against the backdrop of thunder and lightning, and I’m feeling like we’ve never been so unpatriotic in our hard and short history and culture. The America I knew as a child seems like a ghost. Playing in the woods and swinging on the porch in the evening watching lightning bugs come out and more stars than you can imagine. Now we’re a sprawling urban landscape of cookie cutter houses and commercialism, satellites occupying the starless city nights. Environmental catastrophes ingrained into normalcy.

I’m sure people by the millions are buying millions worth of food and goods from Wal-Mart and other branches of the People’s Republic of China Merchandise Distribution Center this Memorial Day Weekend. As opposed to going out and getting some local, American raised burgers from the farmer’s market this weekend. Along with cherries and strawberries, which are in and oh so sweet. Or maybe not sitting on some picnic cloth from thousands of miles away but grandma’s old quilt she knit with 5 other friends over laughs and memories. What is occurring in this place that became famous the world over for that old encompassing American Dream.

How did that dream of so much become ransacked by petroleum, plastic, and foreign products? I wonder what our forefathers and foremothers would say about this. The stranglehold of products over camaraderie. This falsehood of freedom. We may be privileged and have it way too easy but we lack real freedom, and that is something that has been drawing fear and loathing about our nation for some time.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me
~ Woody Guthrie

Impartial analysis of our decisions and policy falls so far from the truth our market chugs on like an ill programmed robot vacuum cleaner banging into the corner counting it's distance as progression as the wheels turn and bump and go nowhere near practical helpfulness with the sadomasochist tendencies of an abused child who snuck into a place of power with vengeance and wanderlust seared into their dark heart. Yes, some evil parasitic android with humanistic tendencies running amok across our homeland and the global market. An evil mechanical bastard child on the loose feeding on our patriotism, nepotism, and memory banks prolonging a false view of American ideals into a new and strange world suckling all it can while it can until the well of profitable ignorance is dry. Horrid. Just horrid.

“The oil companies and other giant corporations have a stranglehold on American policies and behavior, and are choking off the prospects of a viable social and economic future for working people and their families.”
~Bob Herbert

I feel more alone in my fear and loathing these days, like the feeling has subsided, a hiccup in the revolution. There are thousands of our youth and good hearted folk who are feeling the flames of change and are motivated to secure a more just and clean future, but my mind is weighed down under the viscous slop of this oil spill that is gushing ever so as these 1’s and 0’s exist in whatever electron world of the internet civilization. I am more and more worried about the lag time of apathy, topsy-turvy tipping points, and putting band aids on bullet holes.

The buffering capacity of the ocean is already reaching it’s threshold in regards to carbon sequestration, and while thousands of barrels of oil pump into our watery homeostasis regulator, millions of cars zoom down the road where the American Dream was born. It’s time to realign ourselves with a new Dream, something that doesn’t draw worry and stomach pangs about our children and the womb of tomorrow. How much will it take to show us capricious carbon wastefulness of fossil fuels is making all of us fossil fools on a trend to make us fossils.

Humanity is being shaped by the lovers of injustice, that alluring and crazed eyed magician Loren Eiseley spoke of.

“…a magician in the shape of his own collective brain, that unique and spreading force which in its manipulations will precipitate the last miracle, or like the sorcerer’s apprentice, wreak the last disaster. The possible nature of the last disaster the world of today has made all too evident: man has become a spreading blight which threatens to efface the green world that created him…the nature of the human predicament is: how nature is to be reentered; how man, the relatively unthinking and proud creator of the second world - the world of culture - may revivify and restore the first world which cherished and brought him into being.”

The nasty truths nobody wants to swallow. This oil spill is as much our fault as BP’s. Fossilized algae under extreme pressure. BP CEO Tony Hayward is feeling some of that unleashed pressure now, and we’re all bound to feel it sooner or later. The question now is to what extent. How many canaries in the coal mines and vicious smacks to our egos and grappling of reality do we need to wake up to the challenges of this new millennium.

I think about wanting to be more patriotic this year. I want to support my neck of the woods, help clean up my community, form new bonds and reconnect with my neighbors. This is a time of reflection into the iridescent sheen of our actions. I want to buy local, eat local, be local. Turn off the television and have conversations. Get my hands dirty in the garden. Walk in the woods and be in awe of what the Creator has given us. I can feel my roots run deep in the beautiful mountains and rolling Piedmont of Virginia and I’m proud of my heritage. I want to feel proud for what I leave behind whenever the time comes that I and my generation give up the ghost.

What will this oil spill teach us of our past and how will it effect our view of our future? We lost our morality factor. Righteousness exalteth a nation. Liberty in a wasteland is meaningless. It is time for reflection. It is time for a return to decency. Permaculture of the land and mind. Many sense something is wrong but our minds are too wallowed in petroleum to read into the pulsing plumes that enter our ocean, twisted war shack of our twisted short sightedness. Let us pray we regain our atavistic endeavors, our instinctual clinging, and join together to rise above our fallacies into the truth and beauty of our strange species recreating a vision of a world where freedom exists on all fronts and we no longer pollute ourselves with dominating greed and toxic dreams we buy and invest in. Not utopia, but also not a land dictated by these toxic connections to everything we do. Let us invest in common sense and tomorrow, stop pulling from future equity in some frenzied chaos of plastic conversations and sew the seeds of a green and fresh start.

For now the flow follows onward.

photo of the day

bald eagle spreading those big wings at York River State Park, Va

love song for the breeze

i want to go
to the end of the sky

riding the winds of this strange creation
cruising the estuarine churning
folds and friction
waves and wing
take the wind
our love is easy
organic and deep
we exist for one another
riding the winds of this strange creation
avian sanctuary
succulent updraft
in this great aerial ocean
aching for beating wing
swoop dance
the flutter of weightlessness

we spin and lean
into the wind
for we lifted off long ago
with keen intention
not to land for a mighty long time

spring forth

split rail fence
showering redbud blossoms
dogwoods dapple clumps of white
and serviceberry reminds
the ground is unthawing
and we can bury the ghosts of winter
before we sew the next row of being
the leaves spread and stretch
at alarming rates
of positive feedback fervor
the thirst is strong
and the birdsong grows
this vision of grandeur and pulsing life
returns in bounds of wanderlust and dripping mouths of nectar
insatiate me sweetness
greedily lapping up the luscious fruit of rebirth
the seed of truth is planted upon my soul
and the beauty of soothing color showers my wanting eyes

concrete is tough on the soles of my feet

I can feel
It begin to slip
This grip on concrete trips
Dendritic whips
That slash my connection to this reality
Atavistic endeavors overtake
I’m lost in the smell of flowers this spring
And the fragility of watching
Their beauty rise
And fade so fast

And I wonder what of this empire
Will pollinate our nectar filled minds
And what of this world
We will hold onto
When we give up the ghost
Leaving our carbon host
For a house in the celestial canopy

untitled

This isn’t poetry or pain
It’s somewhere in between
Dancing an uncertain dance

It’s not trying to sound pretty or sullen
It’s somewhere in between
And the question becomes
What brings about these filaments of thought
Whipping dendritic fingers scratching
And stroking what lies inside this skull
And what exactly is it
Lurking within those folds and chasms
That hunts for dreams
And stares out at stars trying to remember
Where our pieces came from

Sometimes I think my soul is a child
Running through the maze and passageways of my brain
Playing peek-a-boo with clarity
Which sometimes catches a quick glance
Of that sweet inner sun

pouring forth

I reminisce a spell
When we were still seeds
Before we were sprouts
Before we knew what life was about
If we ever found out

And I vaguely remember
Sitting under the dirt
Wishing for light
Wishing for water
Knowing up from down
But not right from wrong
Or sight from what was long
Overdue
The baby blue
The clue to
Fruitful buds

We rise and push through
And taste the sky for the first time
And its strangely familiar
To the stars
And its strangely familiar
to your arms
And I remember the taste
Of sunshine and rain
I remember the haste
With which we came
Pouring forth from our bodies

Encounters with an old friend

I was looking through my pictures and remembered this great experience that occurred over the Winter. Here's the entry I wrote up afterward.


Mom asked me to come into the living room and look at something. “Maybe I’m losin’ it, but is that something out in the field?” I looked, seeing something a couple hundred feet away that sort of looked like a tree stump, but it seemed to be playing a trick on our eyes, appearing dramatically closer than the background of the tree line. “Is it an owl,” she asked. It couldn’t be, I thought, it’s way too big. But it was something.

I snuck off to my car for some better eyes, binoculars. To my surprise it was indeed a bird, one I adore ever so. Neck folding nicely, tucked into itself, the stump was none other than a great blue heron, Ardea herodias. It stood motionless. What was this bird doing planted in the middle of a field?

A bird of reverence in the stories of Native Americans, Egyptians, and many cultures for it’s wisdom and patience, determination and self-reliance. And of course it’s hunting skills. The great blue heron is a graceful and noble creature moving with purpose and intent.

I should probably take a moment and explain that I’ve always enjoyed this bird feeling a connection to them. Partly seeing one at a young age as well as watching a heronry every evening on Woodstock Pond at York River State Park to end my days a few years back. I would get a good spot and float backwards in my canoe into the mountain laurel and disappear. A parent would come flying back in as the babies starting making raucous noise sounding like dinosaurs.



The parent would regurgitate food into the young, which looking not much smaller you would think they would pierce their beaks through the parents, an aggressive showcase while youngins impatiently waited their turn. It was about 4 families, and I fell in love with them, even getting to see one juvenile fly for the first time, trying to land on a mountain laurel as its legs circled around clumsily under branches that couldn’t support it. Live and learn.

I know they et frogs, snakes, fish, and potentially mice, but the stealthy hunter would have a hard time catching a rodent, and nothing else would be out there in the middle of Winter. After a few moments it approached the woodshed where rabbits sometimes hide. Could it be after a baby bunny? No…

Then it walked into the backyard slowly. Very slowly. I was completely confused by this behavior, it seeming very odd and uncharacteristic. The poor bird tried to fly once, getting only a couple feet. We figured he or she must be old, sick, or wounded. The heron kept methodically stepping and stopping until it crossed the street and ducked under the wooden fence clumsily.

I remember the first time I ever saw a great blue heron flying above the pond in
the pasture this bird had just entered. I was very young and enthralled by dinosaurs as many young boys at that age. I saw the huge bird flapping and thought for sure I had discovered a Pterodactyl that had survived throughout the eons. I was mesmerized, never seeing a creature so big and graceful. I ran home to tell my parents, who probably took my out of breath chatter about seeing a dinosaur as an overactive imagination. I wondered if this old bird was heading to that pond, though feeding seemed far from its mind. I decided this was not an opportunity to pass up, sliding under the fence and creeping closer, getting within 8 feet of the bird. The heron looked at me, not showing much concern, standing on a cow patty.


a pair of great blue herons and painted turtles at Woodstock Pond, York River State Park

Now being one who has stalked many herons while working at York River State Park as well as various other water areas, I know fully well how spooked and careful they are towards humans, some normal instinct mixed with gained fear from the millinery business rush of the 1920’s and 30’s. They have no patience for people normally.



I’ve tried to stalk them and not been able to get within well over 100 feet before, sometimes much further and occasionally closer. It’s normally a matter of luck of being in a spot where one happens to fly and land close to. I had once gotten to within about 10 feet via canoe to a juvenile who had just started flying and was a little curious still. I couldn’t believe how close this old great blue heron let me get. I sat down on the damp ground, not minding the water soaking into my jeans, this was far from ordinary.



The bird would raise one foot time to time, hold it, and then slowly put it down. It just starred off into the field. I was perplexed and confused, filled with a mix of excitement and sadness. I looked at its feathers, its scaly legs, claws bigger than I’d imagined, and huge beak. The beak was a giant dagger, blue on top, yellow on bottom, with a few short white hairs bristling under part of the lower beak close to the chin. I was surprised by the similarity of the bird’s beak to the sheath of the bird of paradise flower, remarkably so.



The bird turned and looked dead at me several times before returning the gaze to the field, occasionally scratching its head close to the eye with a foot, not too unlike a canine. It blinked slowly, sometimes keeping the eye closed for several seconds, seeming to wince and pause.




I wondered what was going through this bird’s head, if it was remembering the past, if it was in pain, if it was exhausted, if it knew the end was near and was preparing itself.

I talked to the bird for awhile like it was a mighty animal spirit, maybe it was. But mostly I just looked at the bird, nearly hypnotized. I was transfixed in the moment, unable to believe my proximity to this beautiful creature, one more piece of magic, another part of our creation. I must have set there for at least an hour. I tried to show respect and reverence for its life, the species having a special place in my heart, even though I suppose I should feel that way towards any living thing. We’re all drawn to certain animals more than others, some always and some for various stages of our lives and growth.

Part of me wanted to stay with the bird all day, follow it, and learn its secrets and where it may go to die. Part of me wanted to let it be, to pass in peace, to die with whatever degree of dignity it could. I decided I would make breakfast, having been up for awhile but the slow trot of this avian had put everything on hold. I left, walking away slowly, looking back over my shoulder once, knowing I would be back in twenty minutes to see what had changed.

Part of me wanted the bird to still be there, part of me wanted the bird to be gone like a ghost. Twenty minutes later the bird was gone. I walked to the pond in search of the heron, finding a warbler and a couple wood ducks instead. I scanned the field with my binoculars. I went all over the field, walking to another pond close by, seeing a handful of songbirds but no sign of the heron. Well, I did find a couple tracks in a spongy tract of dirt, but I never saw that bird again.

It may still be out here somewhere, slowly giving up the ghost. It may be the meal of a fox, mountain lion, or vultures, it is hard to say. But that heron reinstilled a bit of childlike magic in my heart, just like the first time I ever saw one, and I thank this bird for that. Maybe the heron flew off to that big ole pond in the sky where the fish and frog never run out, maybe the heron is just returning to the Earth, its spirit splintering and flying into the aether. Where ever that bird went I feel blessed for spending a few precious moments together before that time came, and just like I’ll never forget the first time I saw one fly, I’ll never forget the day this heron walked across my yard, came within four feet of me, and later more than likely died.



Those piercing yellow eyes hypnotized me, I couldn’t turn my own eyes away. I was locked to this bird, mesmerized. Those eyes that do indeed look like dinosaur eyes; so ancient, so primal, so full of raw being and truth. No deception, conceit, or confusion. Just a longing for things as old as time, desires of life, awareness and intense focus unlike anything I know. A different type of passion I can’t help but respect. Something deep seeded and atavistic. I am grateful to witness such thoughtless beauty, thankful for this heron’s existence, rekindling my sense of wonderment and intrigue towards the limitless mosaic of nature that never ceases to amaze if we take the time out of our day to stop and look, breathe deep and stare the unknown in the eye, and realize we are a part of something so complex and fascinating, so rare and unique, so fragile and fleeting.

The Moon and Worms

Full Moon Names are common in different cultures, and here on the East Coast of the US we follow the moon names originating from the Native Americans. This one we just had at the end of March was the Full Worm Moon. Its name derives from the thawing of the soil after winter revealing earthworm casts, which commonly synchronize with the reappearance of large numbers of robins. It's also known as the Full Crow Moon in some more northern tribes as murders of crows caw at the end of Winter.

This month be on the look out for the crescent moon between Venus and the Pleiades on April 16, and the Full Pink Moon,



named after wild ground phlox, April 28. But back to the matter at hand, our last Full Moon, which I had the blessing to enjoy for a little while the other night. I always enjoy giving in to a little lunacy. There is debate over the name of this moon since some calenders 'fix' the moon names and others go off of full moon order after the equinox. For instance, the Pink Moon normally comes in April, but the Paschal full moon after the vernal equinox dictates Easter following on the next Sunday, so some say the previous moon in March was a premature Pink Moon. These dates depend on different calenders and complicated things.

Nonetheless the full moon is always epic. And always deserves a moment of reflection.



I was sitting under the Full Worm Moon
Last night
Bathing in the light
Watching it play tricks with the stunning monochrome
Thinking about the worms
Returning to their work
Making casts
And quick eyed robins
And I thought about the worms digging
Pushing through the dark
Churning the underneath
Leaving ghost roots
And secret paths
Invisible trees of air
It was so peaceful in a way
Thinking about them so busy below my feet
In their silent lives
Existing and constantly improving the situation
Without concern for gratitude
Or who’s eyes are watching
Yet mine are tonight

And the moonlight against the blossoms
Stirs the child inside of me
And I stop and stare
And watch the petals dance and flap
In their smooth nocturnal glow
I can feel the pull of gravity
Transfixed on that bright ball
That once was a part of us
A friendly reminder
Of the stability we gain from our past
And the grace of looking back
While we are able to remember
It’s amazing what a little moonlight can do

I’m thinking about the worms
Returning to their work
And I dug into their world
Riding the wave of soil and grit and constant push
Eating our paths forward
The night is ours to make of it as we will
While babies sleep
And mothers dream
And pain dissipates
The hungry worm eats onward
Insatiable in it’s giving.

The spectral birds begin to settle

Wing, beak, claw cease
To beat, peck, gnaw, and dig in
And I can hear the silence
Of ice, the flutter of wings calms
Migration of thoughts
Follow the seasons
Even in stillness
The view is always shifting

The spectral birds begin to settle
And I can once again
See where the mountains kiss the
Horizon
And my dreams soar
Into being.

a soothing chill

Rime ice points towards the ghost of a breeze.



Today's photos brought to you from beautiful Whitetop Mountain, Virginia.

I hope everyone's winter is going swell. It's been a strange and wild one and we still have a couple more months to go, and probably a couple more snow and ice storms as well. But hey, it's no need to get all worked up about it. I've been embracing winter a little more this year, trying to get the most out of the season I used to look at with dread. We roll like the seasons and sometimes winter can be dark with the earth tilting so far away from the sun for us in the northern hemisphere. But it needn't be all the time. Anyways I have been enjoying the cold lately, and here's a little poem all about it...



Sometimes
you've just got to give in
to the delicious meal
of winter's chill
and feel your brisk
filled puppy dog lungs
lapping at the air

spring will be greeted with anxious eyes
and bloodroot, columbine, and trout lily
and skin ready to be revealed

but for now
give in
to the delicious meal
of winter's chill
the cold reminds us of much

the snow and me move at different speeds
but i'm trying to learn
the floating phosphorescent flakes glisten and shimmer
showing crystals of the sun
my tongue chases

i'm seeing the tracks
of where i've been
and where others were before
i wander what my trace looks like
the rest of the time

because the snow and me move at different speeds
but i'm trying to learn
and i don't mean i want to be a drifter
i just want to grow
like the drifts
dancing with the breeze
we twirl like red maple fruits spreading our wings

we are tornados
in the entropic ecstacy of chaos
that sometimes spin and claw at order
sometimes i don't mind feeling cold
because like all things in this cyclone
nothing stays the same
and with our only constant being change
i don't mind digging in
my boots are already wet
and this day will be tomorrow soon enough

my senses remind me i am alive
an old man says i hope you don't forget it
and the snow will melt
it will dissipate quietly
into thirsty dirt

I can almost see the place where the falling snow begins
and its getting near to me
and nearer still.

wolf dreams

what are we but floating fragments
of a distant howl
shot out across the spatial
tearing through the temporal
like beautiful children
with desolate dreams
trampling on a path of precious stones
wolf dreams pass like flying
wisps of shooting stars caught
in the periphery
i might just catch them
some day
when the breeze pushes me
just a little bit further
past the threshold of transcendence
where rhapsody lies

i'm tripping over wolf dreams
pawing at my mind