All posts by Elsa Johnson

Eleven Verses on the Value of Snakes

POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

Each year   her shed skin                   draped the rafters   of the barn
tissue of small scales        over-lapping         fragile              strange
in the hands                                        mottled discard of milk snake

 

In my dream          they came from the northwest            diagonally
past the corner of the house   :   solid fabric of snake                  red
and black            striped             side by side                    undulating
packed tight                        roiling                             around my feet

Photo by Heather Risher

Horses grazed at pasture         In the cropped grass          blue black
racer                slimness          slipping by           We  —  bare legged
clutch of summer   —    whooping !    keeping-up        down the hill
down to the swamp where        anticlimactically             he was lost

 

Coiled         lying by the track to the backfields                 crops left
woods right        —        black snake                           thick as a girl’s
arm          as imagination         long               I jumped  each time he
broke for the woods               across the track                      the thrill
undiminished                  when I startled him              he startled me

Photo by Annika Peloski

Raspberry canes     growing high    twined    among the branches of
the small tree    fruit above eye level              me     reaching for red
jewel of sweetness       grasping        instead      small head of snake
eyes open wide       mouth to the berry           not expecting    hands
when I startled it           it startled me                  no one ate the fruit

 

The trapped water    seeped from the quarry walls         along edges
lay           water snakes            somnolent seeming                 hidden
but       ready to slide water-ward        or bite                edgy reptiles
thick as a girl’s arm                          silent     as mental       ululation

 

Hoop snakes were real    the old timer said    in her youth   she saw
them     down    in the fields   by the swamp     where    if they were
startled      they put their tails     in their  mouths     and rolled away

 

That summer    when I was fourteen         I went to a camp    where
one child       not me     sat on a rattlesnake                                   he
startled it                                                                                    It bit

Photo by Gretchen Henninger

In the deep woods   one fall              my adult life   falling about me
like leaves       like the thick leaves underfoot                 stepping on
what’s that !                  …..she    slow from the cold     the torpor of
cold    dark    mottled leaves                a bit small   dark perhaps for
copperhead      thick      not slim like racer           not like milksnake
Too cold to bite          to slow to startle     —     (much)     —     adieu

 

I live in the city now   I do not see snakes       except    occasionally
a dead one     lying flat      drying        on hot asphalt       in the park
squashed by a bike tire       by someone        too slow to swerve   or
perhaps not seeing    value    in snakes      perhaps enjoying       that

 

This summer        working out in the country         that isn’t country
that is      lawns        mower hungry         circling             big houses
I     at peace     planting       focused on flowers               stepped on
something writhing     round under foot               It is she  — ancient
Goddess of Startle     blooming      her sleek skin bright       not like
I saw it              left              discard            draped           in the barn

Photo by Heather Risher

Adventuring into the South

PERIPATETIC, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

I recently took a driving trip to visit friends and family in the South – Clover, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; and DeLand, Florida (a little northeast of Orlando), with half of a day stop in St. Augustine (where we happened upon a Celtic Festival parade). Frankly – too much driving, but the stays in the actual places – lovely.

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A highlight was a daytrip on the St. John River, which I never even knew existed. It is 310 miles long, flows north to Jacksonville, with a drop of less than 30 feet over the length of its fall, so it is very lazy and winding, and links with many, many lakes and loops — a very watery environment that would be easy to get lost in. One part of the St. John River looks pretty much like another (hence, no pictures to entertain you) – but we saw all kinds of animal life: several species of herons, ospreys, kingfishers, egrets, yellow swallowtail butterflies, alligators (looking like someone threw out an old tire, lying there amid the foliage of vegetation), and manatees. Manatees! Hard to see in the black water unless they swam up close to the surface. We cut the motor way down and watched, and did see them, the big lumpen bodies with their spatula tails that make a characteristic pattern of ripple in the water as they move.

The other highlight was visiting the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden in North Carolina (just over the S. Carolina line). This is a relatively new garden, dating to 1999, which I’ve visited before, in showier seasons. This time the main gardens weren’t much to look at, there wasn’t much in bloom – a Chinese Fringe Flower tree, hellebores, daffodils, a magnolia that had been burned by the cold – but I was charmed by the addition of a children’s garden, opportunely sited on a hillside that might actually wear active little bodies out. What a good idea! I also enjoyed the conservatory, which I had not visited previously.

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Sorry to report Bradford/Callery pear is growing everywhere, both in urban areas and in the wild, in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. It is the street tree of downtown Clover (two blocks long – blink and you’ve missed it) – nobody loves it.

Wither are we bound?

PASSION, PERTINENT, POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

A week ago I went to the Natural History Museum to listen to the speakers at the Ohio Natural History Conference  — all of them good and interesting talks (confession; I was tired and slept through two of the afternoon talks; I hope I didn’t snore). They were all short and sweet (20 minutes each), about the relevance and importance of natural history and the natural world, and about the specifics of our changing world, the resilience of it — or not. All of this is just lead in to a lead in; I was much taken with gab-gifted naturalist Harvey Webster’s title for his lead-off talk: “Whither natural history?” and his confession that he had always wanted to use the word ‘whither’ – and now he had. 

Whither. An interesting word, archaic sounding and poetical.  Whither; meaning ‘where’, as in ‘where are we bound?’ That was the context of Harvey Webster’s question about natural history and the natural world. On a planet with a changing, volatile climate, in an age of extinctions and endangered species and at-risk environments, and I include our own built environment in that — whither are we bound?

There is another whither, spelled differently, but spoken the same; it is whither’s homo-phonic sibling, wither, meaning to become dry and shriveled, to decline or decay. Which seems to be one potential answer or result at the tail end of ‘whither are we bound.’ And when I go there, I am close to despair for what we have lost and must surely lose, and I grieve in premonition of the losses yet to come that I cannot even imagine. That’s when I write poems like this:

A Prayer from the Prayer Adverse

How close despair               and prayer                    lie down in bed

born of the same love                and            through the same eyes

see   both fore   and aft                :               that squirrel offers sun

flowers to feathered gods           :                that locust sheds tears

as leaves          :              how mute swan swims         in now murky

meres     and the strangled oak dies    gleaned                  Through

the same eyes       —        those hidden eyes         —           they see

Whither the wild crane     and whippoorwill?                          seals

Sadness to silence                                        and tightens the throat

Despair       inarticulate                   ends all                                  Yet

through those eyes               those hidden eyes             there may

still come a lightening      :        a prayer        —       un-glossed     —

if an un-glossed prayer may   hope                                         For all

that I love                                                   some slight    brightening

But that is not, actually, whither I am bound today, and so, having gotten both the w(h)ithers out of the way, time to refloat this raft. 

These last mild days have drawn me out into the ‘wilds’ of Forest Hill Park, into the valley, especially the short section where the Dugway Brook flows free in its original channel of layered eroded shales. At the south end, its ‘source’, it pours out of an enormous pipe (large enough to drive a small car into), then flows north for perhaps a quarter of a mile, or less, where it disappears, again, into another monster maw. Here one might well ask of it, ‘whither are you bound?’– for it now disappears again, goes underground into an artificial, and killing, concrete channel, and stays buried thus until it reaches Lake Erie at the eastern edge of Bratenahl, where it at last flows free again, out into Lake Erie.

This short distance free to the air is not enough to restore the stream to life. Before it reaches this unfettered stretch it flows buried under Cain Park, emerges briefly by the swimming pool by Cumberland Park, then goes back underground by the Community Center to emerge again, briefly, for this short free stretch in Forest Hill Park. It is a dead stream. Nothing lives in it. But, in this short stretch of its freedom, it is still beautiful. And when I look at it as I walk by it, I wonder what this area was like when my mother and her father hiked these woods and brooks (the Doan and the Dugway) when they moved here in 1920. I like to think that someday, perhaps, the buried section in Forest Hill Park might be freed, re-aired, re-enlivened — and also, all that is now underground between East Cleveland and Lake Erie, providing again a living life-line for life, and the life of the spirit.

Lois Rose, Gardenopolis-Cleveland co-editor, writes of this little stretch of free flowing stream: “I remember the first time I ever walked the stream bed – I could not believe my eyes. It was like a fairy tale — you stepped out of the parking lot and you were in the country on a stream bed, hidden from view, alone. There is a sense of secrecy. You hardly ever see anyone on it. You do not even know this exists, even though you live a mile away. It’s by the Rec center – yet very far from it. I have a sense of pride in that stream. I appreciate how sad and less-than-it-could-be  the stream is – but it has brought me a lot of pleasure over the years.”   

And so it has me, also.

Twenty years ago I visited a place in Ireland called Glendalough, a monastic site of some antiquity (6th century). We hiked up into the bracken covered hills there, following a little rollicking brook through its self-carved cloven bed in the rock. Somehow our poor diminished Dugway manages to remind me of that tannen-saturated jewel, both of them with their cascades and rills, and narrow congested places where the water runs fast — leading me to hope that in some future that I probably will not see, some future wisdom and largess will once again set the Dugway free.

I leave you with one more poem, by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is a better one than my own, in the same way that the stream it describes, flowing into Lough Lomond in Scotland, is a far better brook than our loved but poor and limping Dugway.

Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,

His rollrock highroad roaring down,

In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam

Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn froth

Turns and twindles over the broth

Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning

It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew

Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,

Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,

And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left.

Oh let them be left, wildness and wet

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Holding Pattern

PERTINENT, POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

Last night’s late season storm     pummeled     the Norway spruce     

as if wind’s huge fist                                    held him by the scruff                

and wrung   and wracked him                 All his long lovely limbs     

flailed      at the blows              In quiet times    each black branch 

descends through curves      or lifts              Each dark descending

bough           or branchlet                  scrolls     calligraphy     upon

the sky                                       One day  soon                 or distant      

wind will break him         —        but today?           He is the master      

of the comma                  the pause                      the pendant swish

Meditations at the Winter Solstice

PASSION, PERTINENT, POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

I

Night comes early        this time of year             Short twilight

days          fade to dull   washed over dim                  northeast

Ohio winter days                                      edged to collapse   — 

dark         into deeper darkness                           Entire days of

not-day-not-night          almost-but-not-quite            gloaming

Solstice    in a few short days                                  Not a good

climate for   New Grange effect                                   The sun  

so rarely shines                            one would not think to build

a long      cold       slot of stone                        for sun to creep

up    and back down   again             One might wait years    —

How many                  millennium                        would it take

to connect                cause and effect                in this climate?    

Brighter gloaming on   snow-glow nights                   Brighter             

nights than days                                   when snow is grounded

II

When I was young             I stacked my skis          outside my

door       strapped them on       on winter nights            floated     

almost       soundless      past blackened woods     and     fields

gleaming       bright      in darkness                 (hint of borealis

in blue-black sky)    But these days      creep     to Solstice  —

to beyond                               when     we begin to look for  —

notice     hope     for                       the almost     imperceptible

lengthening      of curtailed light                          toward larger

hours                  The bulk of winter looms ahead             cold

and beautiful                                   but someone has to shovel

walk    and drive         —        at this age one feels     once     is

enough         :        Lake effect weather          dark       to aging

bones               that wish to strap on skis        and flee        fear

less           into wild and quiet         snow-stunned          nights

Rust Belt Riders – Vroom Vroom

PERTINENT, POPULAR INTEREST, PRACTICE

by Elsa Johnson and Tom Gibson

Here at Gardenopolis Cleveland we are huge advocates for soil — you may remember that one of our early book reviews was on Kristen Ohlson’s The Soil Will Save Us – and as true believers, we’re all working on making our own soils more productive without the use of chemical fertilizers or tilling. And we know we are not alone in our belief in the importance of healthy soil.

Recently two of us dropped in on Rust Belt Riders, a small composting business located in a warehouse just east of downtown. Cleveland’s Ingenuity Festival shares warehouse space here, storing many colorful props that we had to wind our way around, which made for a strong contrast with Rust Belt Riders, who are basically three guys (all philosophy majors) doing experiments indoors (a tilapia raising tank and filtration tanks to clean the water) while cooking several large piles of compost outdoors.

As gardeners, most of the compost available to us commercially is based on the decomposition of leaves and yard waste, through the process we call composting. It is a large scale production undertaken by our local cities. Most people still, we suspect, send a lot of their ordinary food waste down the food disposal or into the trash, where it ends up — encased in lasts-for-millennia black plastic — in the dump. A smaller number of us home ‘compost’ (raise your hands, please).  

But most of us ‘compost’ rather loosely (I know I do).  We throw organic plant material from our yards and our plates onto a pile stashed somewhere we can’t actually see it (we call this the backyard feeding station), throw a few leaves or grass clippings on top, and expect that in time it will decay into something we can use on our gardens. And hey, in time, it will. But the Rust Belt Riders approach is way more scientific and controlled. They have studied the soil food web ecosystem, that sustainable system by which microscopic organisms in the soil exist in beneficial symbiosis with plants; that system that perpetually renews soil and plant health—-in contrast to the life-eradicating damage done by tillage or chemical fertilizers.

Their stated mission is to Feed People. Not Landfills. Their goal is to restore the soil food web, not destroy it. Don’t you want to get in on that good work? — Putting the carbon back in the soil.

What is their process…?  Rust Belt Riders collect organic food waste from grocery stores, restaurants, and businesses (50 in all) mix it with other organic ingredients in measured amounts, and ‘cook’ it to specific temperatures for specific periods of time. The key is those other organic ingredients—mainly old wood chips that only fungi are equipped to decompose and that comprise close to 60% of the total compost pile. The end result is compost that is alive with the fungi,bacteria, and other micro- and macrofauna like nematodes that, in combination, take plant health to a higher level.  (Biologically active soil also requires less watering!)

In addition to selling the compost, Rust Belt Riders also offers soil consultations, zero waste events, and workshops. But perhaps the most useful way to make use of Rust Belt Riders would be their collection service. Currently they collect from various sources like restaurants and grocery stores. But it seems to Gardenopolis Cleveland that an opportunity exists for communities of various scales (from a street, for example, to an incorporated entity like a city) to get in on the collection end by having a central collection area where ordinary individuals could bring their household organic waste (no meat), and a regular collection date. That would take things to a whole different level.

Interested in the soil food web? Go to: Soilfoodweb.com

Interested in Rust Belt Riders? Go to: www.rustbeltriders.com

Happy Halloween from Gardenopolis Cleveland!

PERTINENT, POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

poem and images by Elsa Johnson

To celebrate the holiday, we have a poem and some pictures of local yard decorations.

Vulture on the World Tree

It was         new territory to us                                                     We

rode the air currents to get there                                    up-drafts

We spread our wings out        wide                          the tips tilted

up      the wind    riffling    through them          There were three

of us         circling               We smelled dead things           We eat

dead things          The scent of dead things travels              When

we catch          that           smell                    we will fly a long way

A meal should be dead        but not ripe  :                     You need

presence in the land of the dead                                  You need a

tree       that stands alone                    You need to see what else

is out there    in that land                            We can clear a corpse

in a couple hours        —        thorough        —       we don’t notice 

what it is                                                     If you have a dead thing

to get rid of                                             you can do worse than us

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One of Our Own, Part 2

POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

Goldenrods of Northeast Ohio, A Field Guide to Identification and Natural History, by Dr. James K. Bissell, Steven M. McKee, and Judy Semroc. 

Yep— OUR Jim Bissell.

A little backstory here. I’ve known Jim since around 1980. I was living on the east side of Twinsburg, in Summit County, where I’d grown up amid forest, fields, swamps, and ledges, but by the late 70’s Twinsburg had been continually developing since Forest City built the Glenwood development in the mid 1950’s. By 1980 development had finally arrived on the heretofore totally undeveloped east side, where I lived, in the form of a developer buying up a couple thousand acres directly across the street from me, consisting of fields and swamps and ledges that were in the headwaters of Pond Brook (which feeds into Tinkers Creek, which feeds into the Cuyahoga River). Horrors.

Some of us – conservation minded and appalled by the idea of such development there – formed a group to fight this threat and one of the first things we did was ask Jim Bissell to come out and hike the two sets of ledges with us. Which he obligingly did, this youngish (early thirties, I guessed at the time) sandy haired fellow, already a fount of knowledge. This was in the early days of land conservation through purchase by the museum. We were hoping the museum might be interested in our 2000 acres. Unfortunately, while Jim agreed it would be a shame to see it developed, it was not pristine enough or unique enough to be of interest to him or the museum (In case you’re wondering – we did eventually find a way to save it. The area is now a Summit County Metropark.)

Flash forward to now, thirty some years later.  Jim is still out there doing what he loves to do, fighting for natural areas, and me too, I’m doing what I love to do, fighting for places I love. Neither of us is young or even youngish anymore. Occasionally we run into each other, which for me has always been both a pleasure and an education.

As a kid growing up in the country I took goldenrods for granted. Goldenrods were just — goldenrods. They were considered ‘weeds.’ They grew everywhere and pretty much looked the same. In fact, to me, they mostly still do. I do not appreciate them with a botanist’s interest but rather for the beauty of their abundant glory when they are all in bloom. I no longer consider them weeds. So it is with delight that I mention that the beginning of this definitive book on goldenrods begins by celebrating that glory and their role as “the cornerstones of ecosystems across the region.” 

We learn that 100 species of goldenrods have been described, with the greatest goldenrod diversity – 60 species — within North America, and that they support 430 types of insects. We learn that goldenrods are not huge nectar producers, but that this is offset by the vast number of flowers produced per plant, and that their pollen is heavy. Native bees, we learn, and bumble bees, rely heavily on goldenrod nectar, and that there are at least eight butterfly and moth species that feed exclusively on Solidago species. We learn that after the flowers die back for the season the seeds feed chickadees, finches, siskins, juncos, and sparrows. And we learn much more. One interesting aside gives a list of goldenrod uses —  for tea, for dye. This natural history section is followed by a section on how to use the guide, a dichotomous key, and then a species by species description of the goldenrods to be found in Northeast Ohio, with both elegant drawings and clear photographs, and discussion of preferred soils and habitat.

This year a goldenrod volunteered in my front yard garden. It grew into a sizable clump while growing taller, and taller, and taller, growing ultimately about 5 or 6 feet tall. Late in August the flower heads developed and in mid to late September they bloomed. Using the guide descriptions and pictures I was able to identify it as most likely either Tall goldenrod, Canada goldenrod, or Late Goldenrod. The flowers were so heavy that they bore their supporting stems to the ground, and were covered with all sorts of insects – many different kinds of wasps and bees and flies. It was glorious.  Thank you, Jim Bissell, Steven M. McKee, and Judy Semroc.

As a side note, Jim’s work in the region has been recognized by many, including the Nature Conservancy. The Dr. James K. Bissell Nature Center opened October 21. Located on the Grand River Conservation Campus of the Morgan Swamp Preserve in Ashtabula County, the center is open Saturdays and Sundays from 1 – 5 pm from the first weekend of April through the first weekend of December. 

One of Our Own

POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

One of Cleveland’s own, landscape designer Bobbie Schwartz, has written a book: Garden Renovation, Transform Your Yard into the Garden of Your Dreams (Timber Press, 2017). In case you cannot tell from the title, the book is written to the homeowner who isn’t prepared to just hand the whole task over to a designer or landscape architect with the invitation to “knock my socks off—do something spectacular.” Which is almost everybody. So the book is not one of those drool-over-pretty-pictures-of-high-end-gardens type books (the kind our bookshelves are so chock full of ) ….and though there are plenty of pretty pictures in this book, some of expensive landscapes, many are of small scale gardens and spaces easier to replicate. So in many ways this book is aimed toward the do it yourself gardener.

The first chapter, Choosing Change, covers all those ordinary reasons that lead one to undertake a re-do, and I will skip over them, but I like that the final paragraph in that chapter introduces the not so frequently seen goals (in garden design books) of gardening for sustainability, permaculture, and diverting storm water run-off to on-site uses, although these are not explored nearly a fully as they could be. I was/ am much taken with the picture here showing a hillside that hides a children’s play tunnel charmingly disguised as a hobbit house.

The second chapter, Understanding Landscape Essentials, gets down to business by mentioning the obvious (which surprisingly, isn’t so obvious to many people): unlike houses, unlike architecture, landscapes change, natural environments change, so the first step in any redesign is taking stock of those existing on-site elements that will affect a garden’s success — soil, light, drainage, wind, microclimates, animals (deer and other pesky wildlife, but also one’s own pets), water, drainage, slopes, retaining walls, steps (and safety thereof) electrical access, lighting, and maintenance. There is a tidy little section on what Schwartz calls design “themes” – i.e., those defining and unifying concepts a designer uses to integrate a garden’s parts, such as rectilinear, diagonal, curvilinear, and arch and tangent. Thorough, but not overwhelming. Lots of helpful pictures.

The third chapter, Working With Hardscape Elements, covers all those garden parts that do not change – sidewalks and paths, driveways, patios, decks, fences, walls, fire-pits, hot tubs, arches and pergolas – but must come together into a harmonious whole to create enjoyable outdoor spaces and ‘rooms’. One brief section dwells on illusions – always a nice touch.

The chapter Assessing and Choosing Plants starts with a brief discussion of natives vs. exotics, invasive species, and what she calls “plant thugs” (interesting word application, that). This is a bit of a slippery slope for garden designers these days and Schwartz begs the question a bit (the question being: what is native?) (in my own practice I aim for 60 percent natives, and of that 60%, most must be species or cultivars with flowers attractive and accessible to pollinating insects). Oh well. Trees, shrubs, and perennials are a garden’s living components, and the book does a nice job of offering ideas and possibilities without becoming encyclopedic.

The next to last chapter is the practical how to’s: how to start (with the soil, then pick the plants); how to add plants to existing beds; how to choose and work with perennials.

Finally we come to the concluding chapter, titled Success Stories. This is the chance for the author to show her stuff, and she does not disappoint. She shows us a series of front yards and backyards in their before and after personas, as they successfully mature over time. (I do not know that they are all her own designs but I assume most are). My favorite is a low slung ranch style house deck and backyard re-designed with a distinctly minimalist, contemporary feeling, with the once closed-in deck opened up and flowing down to a low maintenance yard of stones and gravels of varying textures and sizes laid out in blocks like a Japanese grandmother’s quilt. Nice. This stands in stark contrast to another redo in which the only pavement is the broad walkway leading to the front door – all the rest is planted with low shrubs, perennials, many types of textural grasses. Also very nice. Kudos to Bobbie Schwartz for a book many will find helpful and useful, rather than intimidating.

Meet Bobbie at Loganberry Books on Sunday, November 19!

Of Birds and Bugs and Trees

POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson and Tom Gibson

A few years back I was cruising on Facebook and ran across a posting that showed a humming bird gripped in a praying mantises’ claws. They looked about the same size and it wasn’t clear the mantis was going to win a meal. Reading further in that posting I discovered it turned out that the hummingbird got away – that time. But that image stuck in my mind, and so one day I sat down and wrote a poem about it.

Lady Mantis Prays Before Lunch

Dear Lord                       I am devout          about            devouring

Every day          I raise my arms         and pray            —         claws

clenched tight         —        please    send me      something bright

and beautiful       to bite                                        I am no different

than the stealing fox            or soaring kite                       Send me

red twig gossamer                        —                     a dainty damselfly

in flight                                   I’ve heard   she  is a mighty huntress

too          —         though     I do not understand         her weapons

Dear Lord                                     how much      better       beautiful

tastes to bite                                     Just yesterday           as I clung

to a branch                     one bright     bejeweled     hummingbird

flew by and           snap !              oh!         the joy       of the green

struggle !                —              I held him for a long      long      time

feeling the heat of his heart                                   We both prayed

Then very recently my co-editor Tom Gibson sent me a link to a story that tells how some praying mantises routinely prey on hummingbirds, complete with pictures of the gruesome feast. I include that link here. Perhaps it is time to think about where we hang our hummingbird feeders that is nearly impossible for mantises to climb or jump to. Not this year, of course … the hummers are gone. I hope they missed the hurricanes.

 NYT article about praying mantises and hummingbirds

I miss their background chitter – one day it is there, omnipresent in the air, and then it’s not, and that’s how I first know they’ve flown. But every year there is one humming bird that lingers on for about another week after the others have flown south, and that little bird and a neighbors’ locust tree inspired another poem about humming birds. It anthropomorphizes the tree (oddly—not the hummingbird) which of course is a ‘no-no’, except I think it’s legitimate to look a something and try to imagine it’s inner life. I’ve never been particularly compliant about ‘no-s’ — why start now?

Black Locust     Missing Hummingbird

For two days she sat                                 and watched a swarm of

honeybees       lay waste her feeder                         golden bodies

fuzzed over its sticky surface                                 avid for syrup  —

while she perched                                           at the very top of me

chipping her feisty song of chitter                                         that all

summer long                   my leaf-ears      loved        to listen to   —

this time in such protest!                                  (and a long journey

ahead of her                    the ways deep                       the weather

unpredictable                                                        her kin       already

flown)                      Why  so many ? !            In the morning when

my heartwood woke          its         slow          fall          awakening

she’d flown                                            perhaps hungry because of

bees            My leaves grieve                  All around me        the air

is vacant                                              Only the hard of me endures

Then in the August of  2016 my street got hit particularly hard by the min-tornado or micro-burst that went through, which was especially damaging to the black locust trees – of which, on my street there are many, very old, very tall, and very brittle. And the locust that every year succored the last hummer before she left had its head struck off, allowing me to ‘see’ that loss through the eyes and heart of the hummingbird. A little over the top — it is, after all, a projection of my own feelings. We cannot really know what the hummingbird feels.

Hummingbird Missing Black Locust

He lost his head            you see              —            Soon after dark

when that    sudden     wind came through         like a smack

to the face                     He was there                  then he wasn’t

I did love him                      the way a bird       does        love

a tree                    sitting      way up       high      in his green

top-most branches                           chitting             about    how I

could see     everything     up there                                 my cousins

forever            fighting                                    over the stiff         red

nectar flowers                                 at that big blue nest    where

the two-legs live       across the street                                His head

cracked                            then fell                    crashing onto another

two-leg nest          shattering him            smashing that nest

awry                                    I think the two-legs miss him     too   

If he could grow another       head                           I wish he’d try