Please click on photos to enlarge.
Which do you prefer? Three different shots of the same scene. I couldn’t decide. Night Herons at rest.
Here is another. Egrets walking.
And finally: Three more choices of water creatures of another sort. Closeup or far view? Which do you prefer?
For Lens Artist Challenge: Three of a Kind
Click on photos to enlarge.
Lift
You burn the air with tail and wing,
not thinking about anything.
Each lift of pinion simple, sure,
anonymous, unplanned and pure.
No slipshod planning, everything
insures facility of wing.
Each barb, each shaft composed with care
made less of matter than of air.
We only guess. We do not know,
what hand has engineered it so,
merely wonder at its might
as we watch your easy flight,
lifting up with ease most rare
by miracle of wing on air.
Click on photos in gallery to enlarge.
Over Head
Lying in the hammock, searching for my words,
I come up with nothing, so I consult the birds.
They lift up off my trees to circle in a ring
as though they’re reconnoitering every single thing.
Swooping to partake of swirling clouds of gnats,
eying all my fruit trees, teasing both the cats,
who, crouched up on the roof, dream culinary wishes—
far above their heads, those tiny feathered fishes
far out of their reach, but so mesmerizing that
they far exceed temptation of squirrel or of rat.
Cats find bird movements insolent, drifting high up there.
Such an outrê thing to do, floating in the air!
Prompt words today are consult, insolent, outré and reconnoiter.
Red-Tailed Hawk
Through the air high up above the graceful soarer weaves,
his shadow cast against the wall and stones and grass and leaves.
Without a modicum of sound, he drifts and circles ’round.
If those below detect him, it will not be by sound.
He seems to simply levitate, on wings lacking in motion,
betraying not one sign of his means of locomotion.
Below small dirt volcanoes betray presence of prey.
Small denizens of tunnels emerge from them each day.
Opting for the light after so many hours below,
darting back to safety when a human comes to mow,
they steal the seed corn, sheer the roots, consume the tender shoots.
As often as the mounds are pressed flat by heavy boots,
the next day there’s another to take each burrow’s place.
Always another obstacle for opponents to face.
What act is fair for man to take in thinning nature’s riches?
What will I do to rid my lot of undersurface ditches?
The neighbors mount a protest, asking for an end
to creatures that usurp their space, and still I do not bend.
But here there is a creature who merely by its will
has the means to swiftly dip and fall upon its kill.
When the Red-Tailed Hawk dips low, watching from above,
I shudder as the claws surround the vole’s form like a glove.
Wings flapping for the lift-off, caught in sun’s early ray,
the bird with prey in claw now lifts and opts to fly away.
Their shadow soars onto my lawn over the wall between,
the prey it’s holding as it lifts too tiny to be seen.
Nature will deal with nature. It needs no intervening.
It is a way that our world has to deal with its own gleaning.
Image from Unsplash. Prompt words today are weaves, modicum, opt, blame and levitate.
This is perhaps my favorite video ever sent to me on the internet. Nothing like birdsong to cheer a gal up!!!
Although these birds are of different species, they have one thing in common, in that they are domesticated birds who also happen to live in restaurants. Who could order chicken with these handsome fellows in clear constant view? Click on the photos to enlarge and read their stories.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 