Conjuring by Hilda Morley

Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds, thirsty and

fighting for dominance, coming in for a landing

wings, whirring little cyclone, flying jewels...

The fastest ones eat first...

 

Summer's reward, measured in sugar water.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

CONJURING by Hilda Morley

Finding the names of birds here,
of flowers, important, I say I must
know them, name them,

                                        to be able
to call upon where their magic
resides for me: in naming them
myself - to lay hold upon whatever
quivers inside the bird-calls,
                                          the dipping
of tail or wing -
                          to know it
inside my hand where power
of that sort lives
                           & in my fingers
wakes & becomes
                            an act of
language.

Wilderness By Carl Sandburg - And I Am Mourning My Own Wild(er)ness

Our beautiful forest, our magical woods overflowing with wildlife that will go...where??? is being systematically destroyed as I write...clear cut...two of the cruelest, ugliest words in the English language...by an already wealthy man who bought the swampy land, to sell the timber, the trees that have nourished the local ecosystem, and my own soul, for over 30 years.  Flooding will ensue without the land break which the forest has provided for centuries...But WTF does he care?  Right, he doesn't...

I am already mourning the turtles, frogs, raccoons, possums, armadillos, snakes, owls, birds, Hawks' habitats being destroyed.  

I am completely inconsolable...so beyond sad.  

I took a few last photos of the gorgeous Pines and trees across the street that will be gone by next week...My life here will not be the same...being a Moonchild born on the full moon at the height of hurricane season, I am averse to change, especially in nature.  I can all but hear the trees screaming...the animals dying...My heart hurts...Every window in front of my house opens to these beautiful trees full of birdsong, cicadas, frogs' croaking, crickets singing...Screech Owls' talking at night and, at times, God's quiet voice, whispering...

What a nightmare, what a horrific, waking nightmare... 

xo, 

Marion

              See the tall, pretty trees across the street?  Going, going...gone...

My Ent-like Pines/woods have watched over me for 30 years...this photo is this Morning...

         ...and this photo is afternoon...they're falling fast, like wounded giants...

                  Goodbye, sweet Pines...

"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the woman of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”  

                                                                                               ― William Blake

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WILDERNESS By Carl Sandburg

THERE is a wolf in me ... fangs pointed for tearing gashes ... a red tongue for raw meat ... and the hot lapping of blood-I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me ... a silver-gray fox ... I sniff and guess ... I pick things out of the wind and air ... I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers ... I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me ... a snout and a belly ... a machinery for eating and grunting ... a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun-I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me ... I know I came from saltblue water-gates ... I scurried with shoals of herring ... I blew waterspouts with porpoises ... before land was ... before the water went down ... before Noah ... before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me ... clambering-clawed ... dog-faced ... yawping a galoot's hunger ... hairy under the armpits ... here are the hawk-eyed hankering men ... here are the blond and blue-eyed women ... here they hide curled asleep waiting ... ready to snarl and kill ... ready to sing and give milk ... waiting-I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird ... and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want ... and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes-And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart-and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where-For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

...Dragonflies draw flame...

                 Blue Tiger Dragonfly, Drawing Flame---

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

Related Poem Content Details

By:  Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; 

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells 

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's 

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; 

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: 

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; 

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, 

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices; 

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; 

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is — 

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, 

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his 

To the Father through the features of men's faces. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Summary from Sparknotes:

The kingfisher, one of the most colorful birds in England, “catches fire” as the light brings its plumage to a bright radiance. Similarly, the iridescent wings of the dragonfly glint with a flame-like beauty. These two optical images are followed by three aural ones: the tinkling sound of pebbles tossed down wells, the plucking of strings on a musical instrument, and the ringing of bells as the “bow” swings like a pendulum to strike the metal side. Each of these objects does exactly what its nature dictates, in a kind of (unwilled) self-assertion. More generally, every “mortal thing” might be thought to do the same: to express that essence that dwells inside (“indoors”) of it. “Selves” (assumedly from the infinitive “to self,” or “to selve,”) is Hopkins’s coined verb for that self-enacting, and he elaborates upon this process in the lines that follow: to “self” is to go oneself, to speak and spell “myself,” to cry, “What I do is me: for that I came.” 

The next stanza extends this concept from object to man. “Justices” (from the made-up infinitive “to justice”) becomes the verb for that which the just man does or enacts. He harbors a grace (bestowed by God) that reveals itself in all his “goings” or everyday activities. And he acts before God as the being that God sees him as, which is Christ, who is both man and God. Christ dwells everywhere—in bodies and in the expressions of human eyes. It is the beauty lent by Christ’s presence that makes “the features of men’s faces” lovely in God’s sight.

Before the World Intruded by Michele Rosenthal

                                                     Birth of a flower

When you're young, the whole world, a lifetime(!) is ahead of you...a seemingly endless expanse of time...an intriguing, mysterious enigma to be explored, discovered, enjoyed and experienced.  Wonder washes over you like a gentle summer rain daily, hourly...minute by minute.  Everything is new, fresh, ecstatic.  

Then time & life intervene.

Things become known, explained, routine.  Sadly, the mysterious slowly becomes the mundane.  

You wake up one morning and the majority of your life is no longer ahead of you, but behind you, in that far off land called memory.  You have no idea how it happened so suddenly, the passing of decades...not years, but decades.  A new millineum is no longer new...

Your days become numbered...there's a red DEAD END sign in the blurry distance, a mere speck, but becoming closer and clearer with each passing week, hour, day... 

No one gets out alive...not even you and me.  xo

Before the World Intruded 

Return me to those infant years,
before I woke from sleep,

when ideas were oceans crashing,
my dreams blank shores of sand.

Transport me fast to who I was
when breath was fresh as sight,

my new parts — unfragmented —
shielded faith from unkind light.

Draw for me a figure whole, so different
from who I am. Show me now

this picture: who I was
when I began.

By Michele Rosenthal

                 Art by MacKillArt