Month: August 2005

This seems to be the weekend all the big ones got away.

Saturday I was standing out in the backyard next to the fence trying to finally get a picture of the contrary Blue Jay that’s been eating all the hazelnuts in the tree next door. Naturally, my attention was totally focused on him and not on what was going on around me.

Suddenly a brown blur seemed to touch, momentarily, on a tree limb not more than three feet from my face. Before I could blurt out, “What the …,” the huge, at least at this range, bird, which I later assumed was the Merlin falcon that had visited our yard last week, was off. Breaking off to the right before making a sharp left between Leslie and I, it pursued a small sparrow that had been at the feeder, apparently unaware of our existence.

I yelled at Leslie to look, but she said she never saw it, though it had passed less than a foot above her head and less than a foot in front of her. For a scant second, all I could see before my eyes were brown and white feathers, in perfect silhouette. My camera with it’s bulky 400mm telephoto lens never moved the entire time.

Somehow the fact that I didn’t get a picture didn’t lessen the sense of awe and, yes, touch of fear, as I suddenly felt as vulnerable as my small visitors must feel in such an awe-full presence.

Furthermore, all the pictures of Sunday’s visit to Nisqually Refuge turned out blank. Though the camera said there were only 13 pictures left on a Compact Flash Card that usually holds 65 shots, there we no images on the card when it was inserted into the computer. I’m still unsure what went wrong, but I’ll admit I was bitterly disappointed that the pictures of what appeared to be a large hawk or eagle and, more importantly, a river otter did not turn out.

Strangely, both of these were pointed out by Leslie, once again proving that two sets of eyes are always better than one set. I adore river otters but have never seen one in the wild before. I wouldn’t have seen this one because I had the camera focused on some sandpipers when Leslie whispered, “Look” and I saw the head of what certainly appeared to be a river otter swim right in front of the birds I was taking a picture of. I followed it with the camera as it swam swiftly about ten feet and then dove and disappeared into the water, likely into a den just under the bank of the stream since he never reappeared.

A park ranger confirmed that there are several river otters on the refuge, and, despite the lack of proof, I’m convinced that must have been what we saw. Hopefully in future visits I’ll finally get a picture now that I know where its den is.

A while back poet Elaine Starkman from Walnut Creek, California, a town I just happened to live in for six years, commented that she liked my site and asked, “do you take original poetry or only that which is already published.” The answer, of course, is that I’m merely reviewing published works I’ve read and trying to encourage others to read them.

I don’t really think I have the time, ability, or patience to edit and “publish” a poetry magazine, and I’m not looking for a sudden burst of unsolicited poems, though in the past I’ve asked some local poets who are friends if they’d be willing to have me publish examples of their poems. One of the reasons I link to so many poetry sites is so that readers can find contemporary poetry.

That said, I’ve had poets leave entire poems in comments and I can’t remember ever deleting one, so I don’t really see any harm in publishing one of Elaine Starkman’s poems:

Short nights

of summer darkness
carry me back to my desk

to silence, to sweet
aloneness, in the confines

of my room
that holds its own

thought and breath
even an extra soul

Soon I’ll lie down to sleep
wrap myself in night’s velvet

fold its coverlet
about me
and turn from fading shadows

while I who love light
pencil in hand,
ride a dark omnibus

until dawn

6th draft 7 18 05 elaine starkman

You can find more of her poetry here and here.

Literally and figuratively.

Our sunny 80 degree Monday suddenly turned into a rather chilly and rainy Wednesday, probably nature’s reminder that summer is nearly over and fall is at hand.

I also started coming down with a cold late Tuesday afternoon, probably the result of Kel’s two weeks in pre-school and the cold he passed on to Kylan, who, in turn, seems to have passed it on to me.

I spend most of Wednesday lying in bed, trying to recover so that I can babysit Leal on Friday. I might be tempted to say I couldn’t do it if I thought it would help to avoid passing the cold on to her, but since I was holding her a good part of Sunday I expect it’s far too late to worry about that.

I did have to cancel this week’s Refuge walk, but I’ll try to schedule two next week on Monday and Friday.

I still have a couple of books on Buddhism I’m trying to finish, and Mary Oliver’s Owls and Other Fantasies, Levertov’s Selected Poems, and Hesse’s Siddhartha wait next to my computer, but I really don’t think it’s fair to a book to read it while you’re sick.

Although I’m no longer attending school or teaching, I don’t read nearly as much in the summer as I do in the winter. Maybe the fact that I’ve read as much as I have can be accounted for by the fact that I’ve spent most of my life in the Pacific Northwest where the cloudy, rainy winters lend themselves well to indoor activities. Somehow it just doesn’t seem right to waste sunny days inside reading. God only knows what I might have turned out like if I’d spent my life growing up in Texas.

Anyhow, they’ll be a slight lag in blog entries, as I’m seldom able to come up with anything worth reading without a couple days lead time, which probably also explains why I’m always late to blog conversations.