The Nature of Things

I seem to be stuck in a rut with poetry these days, remembering my mother as she worked to preserve the harvest from our fruit trees. It is that time of year, of course, the time when the trees' produce is full-grown and ready to be harvested. She canned the fruits as they were or turned them into jams, jellies, or preserves to be enjoyed in winter. I especially remember those delicious peaches and the blossoms from which they came... From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee From blossoms comes this brown paper bag of peaches we bought from the boy at the bend in the road where we turned toward    signs painted  Peaches . From laden boughs, from hands, from sweet fellowship in the bins, comes nectar at the roadside, succulent peaches we devour, dusty skin and all, comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat. O, to take what we love inside, to carry within us an orchard, to eat not only the skin, but the shade, not only the sugar, but the days, to hold the fruit in our hands...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : The Nēnē , or Hawaiian Goose , is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week for this week. The bird, seen here in flight, is one of five species of geese that evolved on  Hawaii. It is the only survivor today of those five species and is one of the rarest goose species in the world. It is closely related to the Canada Goose and apparently emigrated to the island more than 500,000 years ago. *~*~*~* Do you enjoy walking upright? Thank the genes that crafted your ilium . *~*~*~* This fearsome ancient crocodile relative was a predator of dinosaurs. *~*~*~* A tree can be home to an entire ecosystem that includes a trillion tiny lives . *~*~*~* Early humans moved stones long distances in order to use them to make tools as long as 2.6 million years ago.   *~*~*~* The massive Moai statues of Easter Island could be endangered by seasonal waves as early as 2080. *~*~*~* Honeybees have faced a drastic decline i...

My father was a farmer and my mother was a farm wife, and being a farm wife in those days meant preserving things. Like blackberries. But before they could be preserved, they had to be picked. I remember so many hot summer days when she would drag my unwilling corpus out to the blackberry briar patch to be pricked and scratched as we picked those luscious berries. Unlike Seamus Heaney's experience, our berries never went to rot. My mother soon turned them into jellies, jams, preserves - they were delicious and were a comfort to us through the long, cold winters, a reminder that summer would come again.  Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney   Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for Picking. Then red ones inked up and t...

  A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is another Hawaiian species, the  ʻAlawī , a small, inconspicuous  honeycreeper. There are four disjunct populations of the bird on the big island, Hawaii. Each of the populations is nonmigratory and show strong site fidelity throughout the year. *~*~*~* Light pollution at night is a big problem for birds during migration and there is a movement afoot to "take back the night" and change that.  *~*~*~* Streaked Shearwaters spend much of their time in the air and a lot of that time they are pooping ! This behavior was accidentally discovered through video coverage that was meant to investigate something else altogether. *~*~*~* A partial dire wolf skull (a species that went extinct around the end of the last ice age) that is set to be auctioned is expected to bring as much as $30,000 .  *~*~*~* Our current president is strongly anti-environment and is ...

Have you ever been haunted by the song of a bird that you didn't recognize? Edward Thomas could relate.   The Unknown Bird by Edward Thomas Three lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heard If others sang; but others never sang In the great beech-wood all that May and June. No one saw him: I alone could hear him Though many listened. Was it but four years Ago? or five? He never came again.   Oftenest when I heard him I was alone, Nor could I ever make another hear. La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off— As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world, As if the bird or I were in a dream. Yet that he travelled through the trees and sometimes Neared me, was plain, though somehow distant still He sounded. All the proof is—I told men What I had heard.                                      I never knew a voice...