Paean to the Equinox

 تُولِجُ اللَّيْلَ فِي النَّهَارِ وَتُولِجُ النَّهَارَ فِي اللَّيْلِ ۖ

 [Sura 3, ayah 27]

Hail Equinox!  Emblem of an equal King,

whose balance-pan lies level ‘neath the oak

where his hands  with open palms dispense

plain justice, to earl and churl alike.

Now doth the husbandman  fête Harvest-Home,

from sheavèd grain   bakes celebrating loaves,

and with sweet rising smoke salutes

the prospect of the fall of autumn leaves.

E’en as our Maker  sundered dark from light,

in one proportion, when the World began,

so too the equinoctial Judge sits throned,

and equably  divides the day from night.

Praise Him! whose broad hand shaped us out of clay,

and like the Equinox, parts night from day.

Beginning at the Bottom

Supreme perfections  in each insect  shine;

each shrub is sacred,  and each weed  divine.

-- Richard Blackmore

Such is the scene  at the foot of the scala naturae.

For glimpses of that lofty natural ladder, try these posts:

   The Great Chain of Being

And for God’s least creature, the lovable bug, these:

   Bugs

Feasts of Spring

We had breakfast guests this morning on the deck;

some with feathers, some with fur.

Sunflower seeds bright black  atop the snow.

[For a similar vision  from around this time two years ago, try this.]

Lakeside Insight

Tiny birds,     clustered on bare branches

thick as grapes

Finke "River" monostich

A stiff wind   made the lake look

a river indeed.

Glen Helen gorge distich

   A dog barked  across the lake.

   The cliffs, with exactitude, barked back.

Thirty-Two Turtles

On the sun-baked back of a fallen tree,

leaning well into the lake,

thirty-two turtles along its length,

stretched out like bells in a carillon,

from wee-littlest to next-little to less-little

through maybe-medium,  on up to the grand, rotund

Turtle King.

All are facing the same way;  only seldom does any one budge.

And why should they?  They bask in Turtletude.

Contemplating all this,  sagely from the shore,

at last I beam at them  this thought-balloon:

“Carry on, gentlemen;  carry on.”

March in Maryland

In like a lion,
out like a lamb ...

Back in like a lion,
Back out like a lamb ...

[And as to this new April -- It seems to be suffering from some kind of Gender Identity Disorder, imagining itself to be January.]

worm poem (k thx bai)

“With dawn  pinking the eastern sky

and the early bird  chirping  over its early worm …”

-- P.G. Wodehouse, Service with a Smile (1961)

That status of that passage  is rather fraught.  It is not truly Found Poetry;  for, though it appeared originally in straight prose, and though it is (if you like) rather poetic, it was never intended as unselfconscious prose-poetry:  rather, it was a burlesque of such language in a purely comic context.  And yet -- Its utterance (on the lips of that irresponsible/irrepressible way, Uncle Fred) -- does remind us, somehow, of the sweetness of such visions, even so expressed, before jadedness and taedium vitae set in …

March poem

Over the lip of the lawn -- what spills?

Daffodils!

Thrust from the thick of the thicket  -- what thrills?

Daffodils!

Yellow and tall, with petals small --

O wilt thou be  my all-in-all ?

Later, come time,  other blossoms may bloom

in their turn,  to their measure of praise and acclaim.

But for now, ‘tis thou --

thou art our flower, now !

Fifty shades of tan

   [early March, mid-Atlantic]

Nothing yet budding;

a few dry leaves  from autumn last 

(papyrus-yellow  and paper-thin)

still clinging to their beech trees.

Leaf-litter, windthrow,

straw-stalks,  hay-mow:

all -- tan ochre beige wheat hazel 
fulvous fawn or tawny -- 

-- all as yet  the color of canvas,

for Spring  to paint upon.

Gray companions (on the back deck)

A junco,

and a squirrel,

each gray above

and white beneath,

maintaining a respectful inter-distance,

separately pecking  at the seed we have strewn.

"Ginger Man" monostich

~   Mushrooms  fatten    in the warm September rain   ~

[quarried from:  the 1955 novel by J.P. Donleavy]

New England monostich

~     seagulls     sat         in rows      on the rocks   ~

[Source:

Van Wyck Brooks,  New England:  Indian Summer (1940), p. 48.]

The Wonders of Nature

“How each unique frail flake

of coldest snow  most white,

no one another’s like --“

"(I am uniquely meee ...)"

--  The hell you say.

Right now there must be a billion of them out there,

covering everything like a slab of sludge.

Seen one, you seen them all.

-- Susie, hand me the shovel.

Kenosis

Aloft alone

in nightsky selflight

      the moon

beheld below

the darkling pond:

midst unseen reeds;

and yearned.

“Thou noon to my night,

thou lute to my light,

…

…”

-- then stooped in sooth to kiss her,

and sank, and swam, and  shone therein.

[Note:  The poem is incomplete.

But at my time of life,

you never know when you might be gathered;

so here you go.]

R. Krebs monostich: Bats at night

  ~

~   their flitting forms    defied the eye   ~

  ~

[Quarried from this source: 

Jan Valtin, Bend in the River (1942), p. 239 ]

They Stand Revealed

All the leaves now     

fallen, fallen,

the squirrel-huts stand plain which had been hidden,

high atop the towering tulip trees.

They look woefully inadequate shielding from winter winds,

being themselves now all unshielded.

~

The past few days have been balmy;

and yet the hint of winter

in the skies with their wincing shrinking light

has drawn the raccoon  once again  out of the woods.

We seldom see him;  but the trash-can, toppled on its side with the lid pried,

the chicken bones denuded of their remnant juicy delicacies,

tell the tale.

Welcome back, you furry forager;

time to switch to the more cumbrous container with a lockable top.

~

All at a sudden-once  / seen

stark, behind spare bare branches,

a wisp of cirrus

slow       ly       slips      .   .    .

revealing  in its extended irregular outlines

indecipherable intricacies  of wind and temperature  in the high sky,

like a Gram-stain unveiling   invisible infusoria.

Autumn Poem

honeygold lemonyellow

splashes of    here (t)here    everywherewhichwayfalling

leaf ..  f    …   f  ..     s s s …..

from the tall tops   of tulip trees

                       in

                       b

                         l

                       o

                         o

                       o

                        m

                       .

                       .

.                      .

Squirrel Algorithms

October, Two thousand and fifteen.

Beneath our spreading oak.

(Strategy 1)  Eat an acorn;  bury one.

Eat an acorn;  bury one.

Eat an acorn;  bury one.

Eat an acorn;  bury one.

Eat an acorn;  bury one.

Eat an acorn;  bury one.

(Strategy 2) Scamper     Up

to the (tippy) tree-          top ….

and there make (!) Mis-chief (!@!@1@1)

so that acorns rain down

upon the freshly-swept deck

right above where the Nice Man  (thy chronicler,

O fellow creature  here below)

is trying  to read his special interesting   big book,
beneath the spreading oak ...

…

Fortunately   I am wearing my Magic Hat,

and acorns  cannot harm me.

(!  WOW !!   That was close, tho.)