fleeting glimpse

You might see the outline of a figure in the distance

See how they move as they walk and know

Who it is who moves that way.

You might hear the sound of a voice in the next room

Hear just a few words in a phrase and know

Who it is who speaks that way.

Some people know birds that well.

You might scan all around up and down

To catch a fleeting glimpse of movement

Or hear a distinct few notes of a call or song.

You might turn towards the sound and peer

Into the vegetation into the wiggling leaves

Hoping to find the source of the sound.

We strain to see it when we do not know it.

We find the bird sometimes but sometimes

We look and look and cannot find the hidden one

Camouflaged in the canopy.

No matter that the bird sings right in front of us.

No matter that we walk left and right looking carefully.

No matter that we try watchful waiting.

Try as we may, try as we might, not this time.

baltimore oriole duet

presby iris gardens

album

south jersey delaware bay birding

Fortescue Red Knots and Migrant Shorebirds album

Glades Wildlife Refuge album

Egg Island album

Millville Maurice River album

google map

not the end of the world

When I hear someone say

“It’s not the end of the world.”

I think of the image of time as a line

And a lifetime as a line segment.

There are so many expressions invoking images

I often get lost from the conversation

Thinking about the literal meaning of the words.

Perhaps I have a touch of autism.

Last week my Korean ESL student got frustrated

Reading a story that said the person acted

Out of frustration.   To him that made no sense.

Why not in frustration?  I understand.

When I was a boy numbers and logic made sense.

I learned new words as mathematical concepts.

Later I was confused upon hearing those same words

Holding some alternate meaning outside math.

My favorite poet as a young man was a linguist

Separating out the phonemes and morphemes

Combining them into words like atoms into molecules

While the roots of his words became roots in the ground.

Sometimes this language is foreign to my ear

And what I hear is just the intonation and rhythm.

Sometimes the letters on the page are strange characters

What the typographers call Greek.

A poem begins “Moon, cantilever of syllables”

And I see an enormous dipthong bridge

Spanning the Milky Way transporting me

Far out into the endless universe.

indian pond teaneck

album

losen slote ramapo river overpeck lake

album

now we are three

album

great oaks

While talking to a man who was clearing a path

Following the last big storm blowdown here

I heard something new to me

How the forest succession is changing.

He was lamenting the loss of the old oak trees

Saying they are the last of their kind around here.

There are so many deer in the suburban woods

Browsing the saplings there are no young trees.

Now I am looking at the trees with new eyes.

Will there be no acorns underfoot in a few years?

Forests change.  The grand chestnut trees are relics.

The elm trees are almost gone though I remember them.

I won’t be here to see this future beech forest

Without oaks.  By then no one will know it was like

Under the great oaks and graceful elms or picture a scene

 “Under the spreading chestnut tree…”

But perhaps this prediction is wrong.

If there are no acorns to feed the deer

There will be few deer to eat the oak saplings.

I think the deer will thin out as the old oaks thin out.

And then the oaks could make a comeback.

There’s a balance between eater and eaten.

And there’s another protection for the saplings

Perhaps keeping the deer away like a fence.

When a tree falls and there’s a clearing open to the sky

The prickly berry bushes thrive in a dense thicket.

The saplings can grow there safe from foragers.

I think the oak trees may be around for a long time.

wood thrush singing in lost brook preserve

ringwood spring

picassa album
google map