Tag Archives: Egrets

JUST TO BEHOLD

 

 

Two coyotes lope across the road in the rain

in their retreat from the swollen creek, roaring

like prolonged thunder distantly—unafraid

 

for they are fat on rodents curled in flooded

burrows, tailings fresh.  The herons and egrets

will appear with the sun, stand guard like statues

 

in garden nurseries look alive.  Too wet to fly,

the sheltered hawks in the limbs of leafless trees

will spread their wings until their feathers dry.

 

And we too wait.  Some days it’s too wet—

too hot, too cold, or too dry to work—but once

in a while it makes more sense just to behold.

 

 

CORRALS

 

IMG_2218

 

Our square creations
become places for the wild
to relax and roost.

 

 

WPC(2) — “Symmetry”

 

GOOD LUCK FISHING

 

                         Don’t pray for the rain to stop.
                         Pray for good luck fishing
                         when the river floods.

                                – Wendell Berry (“Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer”)

And we will fish reflection pools
with Egrets and Great Blue Herons, wade
cloudy skies when the creek subsides

listening to the glorious chorus of tree frogs
croaking symphonies from fresh verdancy—
the canyon clean, all tracks erased

but for the moment to begin again.
What better luck can any god offer
a mad farmer, or mankind?

April 1968: my feet wet with fishing
the great white limbs of sycamores,
naked canopies reflected below me,

recording fresh soliloquies on war
that have not changed but for poetic
editing each time the creek rises—

hope still claims high water marks
beyond the creek bank, despite
clear-cut scars upon this landscape

after a decade’s invasion of machinery
from towns craving to become cities.
We pray yet for good luck fishing.