Collecting...

In a pool of sand and silt a starfish had thrust its arms up stiffly and was holding its body away from the stifling mud.

"It's still alive," I ventured.

"Yes," he said, and with a quick yet gentle movement he picked up the star and spun it over my head and far out into the sea. It sank in a burst of spume and the waters roared once more.

"It may live," he said, "if the offshore pull is strong enough."

He spoke gently, and across his bronzed, worn face the light still came and went in subtly altering colors.

"There are not many come this far," I said, groping in a sudden embarrassment for words. "Do you collect?"

"Only like this," he said softly, gesturing amidst the wreckage of the shore. "And only for the living." He stopped again, oblivious of my curiosity and skipped another star neatly across the water.

"The stars," he said, "throw well. One can help them."

He looked full at me with a faint question kindling in his eyes, which seemed to take on the far depths of the sea.

"I do not collect," I said uncomfortably, the wind beating at my garments. "Neither the living nor the dead. I gave it up a long time ago. Death is the only successful collector."

I nodded and walked away, leaving him there upon the dune with that great rainbow ranging up the sky behind him. ...

--Loren Eiseley, "The Star Thrower," in The Unexpected Universe

Yellow Seahorse

Ever so fragile
Drifting along a current
Pony of the sea

--Susan Walker

"The Secrets of the Seahorse"

by Scott Carpenter

You caught my eye
floating through the sea grass
seeming to move without effort,
like a belle making her entrance,
but up close fluttering your tiny fins
with all your delicate might

Little Lined Seahorse
lightly bowed and demure,
elegant and white as an angel
but draped in light green and pale yellow
understated but unforgettable, beguiling but untouchable

You draw me to you
with your impossible shape
and your eyes always looking
up at me, nodding as you pass through
the waving grass,
as if to leave, before

gracefully curving
your enchanting tail around
the grass and pausing to look back
like a silent screen siren casually leaving
her fallen handkerchief
for a hesitant beau

Your lacy veil armors you
your ancient manners play
with a light touch I can only admire
the sea grass curtain closes on your triumph;
beneath your grace
wells strong resolve

My First "Video"--The Wolves of the Wolf Conservation Center

The Rose

Song of the Rose

(attributed to Sappho)

If Zeus chose us a King of the flowers in his mirth,

He would call to the rose and would royally crown it,

For the rose, ho, the rose! is the grace of the earth,

Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it.

For the rose, ho, the rose! is the eye of the flowers,

Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair,--

Is the lightning of beauty, that strikes through the bowers

On pale lovers who sit in the glow unaware.

Ho, the rose breathes of love! ho, the rose, lifts the cup

To the red lips of Cypris invoked for a guest!

Ho, the rose, having curled its sweet leaves for the world,

Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up,

As they laugh to the Wind as it laughs from the west.

 

--trans. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A Chipmunk

"The Chipmunk"

My friends all know that I am shy,
But the chipmunk is twice as shy as I.
He moves with flickering indecision
Like stripes across the television.
He's like the shadow of a cloud,
Or Emily Dickinson read aloud.
--Ogden Nash

"For the Chipmunk in My Yard"

I think he knows I’m alive, having come down

The three steps of the back porch

And given me a good once over. All afternoon

He’s been moving back and forth,

Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs,

While all about him the great fields tumble

To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky

To be where he is, wild with all that happens.

He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows

Living in the blond heart of the wheat.

This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires

Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots,

Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter

On which he fastens like a small, brown flame.

--Robert Gibb

"The Chipmunk"

I
He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence,
Or on the fallen tree,--brown as a leaf
Fall stripes with russet,--gambols down the dense
Green twilight of the woods. We see not whence
He comes, nor whither (in a time so brief)
He vanishes--swift carrier of some Fay,
Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief--
A goblin glimpse upon some wildwood way.

II
What harlequin mood of nature qualified
Him so with happiness? and limbed him with
Such young activity as winds, that ride
The ripples, have, dancing on every side?
As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith
Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight,
Gnome-like, in darkness,--like a moonlight myth,--
Lairing in labyrinths of the under night.

III
Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a hole
Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps;
Lulled by near noises of the laboring mole
Tunneling its mine--like some ungainly Troll--
Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps
Picking its rusty and monotonous lute;
Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps,
And trees unrolling mighty root on root.

IV
Such is the music of his sleeping hours.
Day hath another--'tis a melody
He trips to, made by the assembled flowers,
And light and fragrance laughing 'mid the bowers,
And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree.
Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze
(The silent music of Earth's ecstasy)
The Satyr's soul, the Faun of classic days.

--Madison Julius Cawein

Basho's Frog Haiku

Furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
--Basho

Old dark sleepy pool
quick unexpected frog
goes plop! Watersplash.

(trans. by Peter Beilenson)

Listen! a frog
Jumping into the stillness
Of an ancient pond!

(trans. by Dorothy Britton)

old pond
a frog leaps in —
a moment after, silence

(trans. by Ross Figgins)

The old pond, yes, and
A frog-jumping-in-the-
Water’s noise!

(trans. by G. S. Fraser)

Muir's "Wilderness Conversion"

"I'm in the woods, woods woods, & they are in me-ee-ee. The King tree & me have sworn eternal love-- sworn it without swearing & I've taken the sacrament with Douglass Squirrell drank Sequoia blood, & with its rosy purple drops I am writing this woody gospel letter. I never before knew the virtue of Sequoia juice. Seen with sunbeams in it, its color is the most royal of all royal purples. ... I wish I was so drunk & Sequoical that I could preach the green brown woods to all the juiceless world, descending from this divine wilderness like a John the Baptist eating Douglas Squirrels & wild honey or wild anything, crying, Repent for the Kingdom of Sequoia is at hand."
--John Muir, letter to Jeanne Carr, Fall, 1870
(as found in Land and Spirit in Native America by Joy Porter, Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2012)