poets

Yes I Do Want to Punch

/ Tracy Abell / 7 Comments

See this squirrel’s clenched paw?

May 15, 2022

That little fist is a result of me tapping on the window to stop it from eating the peanuts we put out for birds* and, for the longest time, I thought it was the same brazen squirrel making a fist at me in response to my tapping. But then I realized it couldn’t be the same squirrel every single day and that ALL squirrels do that. Their immediate reaction to threat is a fist.

I can relate. Maybe I should enlist some squirrels to join me because, Yes I Do Want to Punch / fascists in the face.

*the squirrel food is on the back fence

Reverie

/ Tracy Abell

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.   ~ Emily Dickinson

July 18, 2019

While this photo is of a bee and lavender (not clover) in my yard (rather than the prairie), the image still induces a reverie.

Too long

/ Tracy Abell

American Robin. January 21, 2020.

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.   ~ e.e. cummings

I believe

/ Tracy Abell

American Robin. February 14, 2020.

You have to believe in happiness,
Or happiness never comes …
Ah, that’s the reason a bird can sing –
On his darkest day he believes in Spring.
~  Douglas Malloch

In a pine tree

/ Tracy Abell / 1 Comment

In a pine tree,
A few yards from my window sill,
A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and down,
On a branch.
I laugh, as I see him abandon himself
To entire delight, for he knows as well as I do
That the branch will not break.
~ James Wright

Poem: Egrets by Mary Oliver

/ Tracy Abell / 17 Comments

Poetry intimidates me so I usually avoid it.  But my sister insisted I’d appreciate Mary Oliver’s poems.  And I do.  Especially this one since right now I’m missing all those amazing birds I saw everywhere in Florida.  The very last, um, stanza? (calling[info]kellyrfineman) gets me where I live.

EGRETS
by Mary Oliver

Where the path closed

 down and over,

   through the scumbled leaves,

     fallen branches,

through the knotted catbrier,

  I kept going.  Finally

    I could not

      save my arms

        from thorns; soon

the mosquitoes

  smelled me, hot

    and wounded, and came

      wheeling and whining.

        And that’s how I came

to the edge of the pond:

  black and empty

    except for a spindle

      of bleached reeds

at the far shore

  which, as I looked,

    wrinkled suddenly

      into three egrets – – –

a shower

  of white fire!

    Even half-asleep they had

      such faith in the world

that had made them – – –

  tilting through the water,

    unruffled, sure,

      by the laws

of their faith not logic,

  they opened their wings

    softly and stepped

      over every dark thing.