Poetry Sunday: Family Reunion by Dorianne Laux

Summer was the time for family reunions in the place where I grew up. My own family's (which coincided with that of our church) was the third Sunday in June. It was always hot - it was mid-June in the South after all. 

People came from far and near to spend a day with family and friends that they might not see for another year - if ever again. There was all-day singing at the church with "dinner on the ground," except it wasn't really on the ground. It was on a long series of wooden tables built behind the church. People brought their food from home and spread it on the tables and everybody shared. Potato salad and fried chicken always featured prominently in the food that was brought.

When I was growing up, my mother always got me a new dress and shoes for the day and I generally ended the day with blisters on my heels from the new shoes. But that was a minor inconvenience.

When I came across this poem in my search for one to feature this week, it reminded me of those days and of so many people that I loved who are no longer there. No more family reunions when so many of the family members are gone. But anyway who needs a picture of it all when the camera of the mind remembers...

Family Reunion

by Dorianne Laux

Camera in hand, I call out to them,
one by one, in twos and threes,

working up to the group shots,

the family portrait.

My nephews, scrubbed clean, dressed

in red, hug each other's mirror image

and smile the same smile.

Head to head, their dark hair mingles

as the shutter clicks.

Now I sit the baby between them,

my niece who has my eyes, my nose,

a stranger's wide mouth.

The flash going off in her face

makes her love the small black box

I hold, so much, she is willing to pose

forever, as if I held the force

of the sun, a gorgeous toy, and all

her days balanced in my hands.

Grandmother squeezes in, holds

her baby's babies in her diminishing lap,

circles the shoulders of her son,

her daughters, my own shy daughter,

and pulls them into the frame,

the fine lines of noses and chins

a painter's signature stroke.

I take picture after picture,

the windows going darker

with each bright flash, each face

held up to the repetition of light.

But when I look to see how many frames

are left, I find the tiny window

in the camera is empty, remember

the film left on my dresser

500 miles away. I smile at my family,

ask them to stay where they are

just a few minutes longer as I press

the blank shutter again

and again, burning their images into my own

incorruptible lens, picture

after perfect picture, saving them all

with my naked eye, my bare hands,

the purest light of my love.

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This week in birds - #686

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

                      Ruby-throated Hummingbird                                       Rufous Hummingbird

How well do you know hummingbirds? Well, here are seventeen facts about them that will help you know them just a little better. 

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The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is the Peruvian Thick-knee, a "shore bird" that lives far from any shore. It is, in fact, a desert-dwelling bird found in the dry coastal plains of northwestern South America. Its population is decreasing.

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The Environmental Protection Agency no longer seems intent on protecting the environment. One of its latest actions is to kill proposed rules for Pfas-contaminated sewage fertilizer.

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Beehives may operate as democracies but first the rival queens fight to the death.

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Poop from southern right whales is revealing that they have a more varied diet than previously thought and that just might make them more resilient to the effects of climate change. 

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Video of orcas off the California coast shows them ramming a sunfish so hard that it explodes.  

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Finally some good news about the endangered red wolves: There have been four litters born this year to the critically endangered species in North Carolina.

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Avocado seeds have been spread from South to Central America over a period of thousands of years. (And in fact I now have one growing in a pot in my backyard.)

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Hunter-gatherers introduced trout to a Norwegian mountain lake 7,000 years ago.

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Naked Mole-Rats are one of the more interesting (and surely one of the ugliest) species on Earth and it seems that the queens are able to emit a special scent that prevents their rivals from reproducing. 

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We don't usually think of deserts and penguins together but there is one species of penguin that thrives in deserts. It is the Humboldt Penguin of Peru but its population is in trouble.

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In still more bad news for the environment, the Trump administration plans to auction off sections of water around American Samoa for deep-sea mining. 

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Twin echidnas (called puggles) have been born at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

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Do our tiny acts meant to help the environment actually matter? They do indeed add up.

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A raccoon with a (possibly) rare congenital spine condition has become a celebrity in a Seattle neighborhood. He's even been given a name: Jimothy.

Nick Anderson is optimistic

Those branches that were cut off are significant, I think. It may be necessary to cut off a few more, but let's hope that the tree itself will remain sound and continue to grow. 
 

Poetry Sunday: Summer Magic by Leslie Pinckney Hill

Here's a poem about summer by a poet that I was not familiar with. He was an African-American born in Virginia in 1880. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard with a bachelor's degree in 1903 and a master's degree a year later and in 1922 he wrote this poem about summer. It seems to describe the season well, don't you think?

     She hung aloft the rounding moon,

  She poured her sunshine on the earth,
She drove the sap and broke the bud,
  She set the crimson rose afire.

Here's the poem in its entirety:

Summer Magic

by Leslie Pinckney Hill

So many cares to vex the day,  

So many fears to haunt the night,

My heart was all but weaned away

  From every lure of old delight.
Then summer came, announced by June,
  With beauty, miracle and mirth.
She hung aloft the rounding moon,
  She poured her sunshine on the earth,
She drove the sap and broke the bud,
  She set the crimson rose afire.
She stirred again my sullen blood,
  And waked in me a new desire.
Before my cottage door she spread
  The softest carpet nature weaves,
And deftly arched above my head
  A canopy of shady leaves.
Her nights were dreams of jeweled skies,
  Her days were bowers rife with song,
And many a scheme did she devise
  To heal the hurt and soothe the wrong.
For on the hill or in the dell,
  Or where the brook went leaping by
Or where the fields would surge and swell
  With golden wheat or bearded rye,
I felt her heart against my own,
  I breathed the sweetness of her breath,
Till all the care of time had flown,
  And I was lord of life and death.

This week in birds - #685

The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is the Andean Cock-of-the-rock, a non- migratory bird of South American forests. The main threat to the species is habitat loss. The population is thought to be decreasing but is of least concern to this point. 

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A meteorite that crashed into a New Jersey home in 2024 contains some of the building blocks of life according to scientists who have studied it.

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I've always been fascinated by the Mayan civilization and here is a particularly interesting character from that civilization - a math whiz who lived more than 1,000 years ago. 

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The Trump Administration has stripped the Endangered Species Act's ability to protect habitats.

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The Rusty Lark, a bird that had been lost for nearly a century, has been rediscovered by birders in Chad.

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New York state has banned the building of large data centers for a year while it studies energy and climate risks which they present.

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A worm-like creature that lived about 550 million years ago is the earliest known "right-handed" being. 

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Harvestmen, aka Daddy Longlegs (or Granddaddy Longlegs, as I knew them when I was growing up) are a particularly interesting and often misunderstood group of arachnids.

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Trump has reduced Bear Ears and Grand Staircase Monuments by three million acres with a single stroke of his pen. 

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"Space balls" have been washing up on Australian beaches presenting a mystery for authorities.

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Shrimp may be thought of as "bugs of the sea" but then bugs could be considered the "shrimp of the land."

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Sperm whales living in the eastern Mediterranean Sea seem to have developed a dialect of their own that is different from those in the west.

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We know that giraffes are clever animals but they may be even smarter than previously thought.

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Small-town communities are becoming alarmed about carbon storage projects planned for their area.

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Here are nine interesting facts about Bald Eagles.

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And here are some images from this year's Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest.

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Climate change is affecting how and where people take vacations.

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The Andean leaf-eared mouse has adapted to live at extremely high elevations where no other mammal is known to reside.

Poetry Sunday: Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis to a father who was a Palestinian refugee and a mother who was an American of German and Swiss descent. Through the years, she has been the recipient of many honors and awards for her work. This poem was written in 1952 and I think you will agree that it has aged well.

 

Kindness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

(If you are not currently a follower of the blog, I invite you to become one. Join our happy group!)

This week in birds - #684

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week for this week is the Pomarine Jaeger, a widespread species of both North and South America as well as Hawaii and the Caribbean. The bird's population trends are unknown but its conservation status is considered of least concern.

The Harlequin Duck was the Bird of the Week for last week. A bird of North America in both aquatic and forest habitats, its population is increasing and its status, too, is of least concern.

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On Friday, the Trump administration moved to open habitats of threatened and endangered animals to farming, drilling, mining, real estate development, and other activities that severely erode protections.  

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And, of course, the administration has appointed a critic of mainstream climate science to oversee the federal government's report on how climate change affects the country.

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Here are some fun facts about Bald Eagles.

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There is some evidence that early flowering plants depended on dinosaurs to eat their fleshy fruits and spread their seeds.  

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Bottlenose dolphins are clever animals and it seems that the females of the species have strategies for avoiding "pushy" males.

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The relationship between wolves and people is complex but the California Wolf Project is proving that it is possible for the two species to share the same land.

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Archaeologists have discovered a lost Mayan city that may yield clues about the civilization just before its collapse.

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Western Europe just experienced its hottest June on record. Moreover, higher temperatures in the seas around Britain and Europe are a threat to marine life. 

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So we have an administration that is anti-wind power and pro-coal and that policy is expected to add $650 billion to Americans' energy bills in the next fifteen years.  

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What is the meaning of the "cold blob" in the Atlantic Ocean? Inquiring scientists want to know.

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Here are eleven wildlife images that showcase the wonder of the planet's waters.

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Argentina's Blue-winged Macaw has bounced back from being declared "extinct in the wild."

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First described 189 years ago, the Himalayan Pangolin has emerged as a distinct species.

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Bumblebees seem to respond either positively or negatively to sweet or bad tastes.

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Sea mining could devastate populations of snails and other mollusks that live around hydrothermal vents.

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Maybe our hobbit-like cousins on Flores Island weren't very smart.

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Can the hammerhead shark be saved from extinction?

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More than 70 million years ago, North America was split down the middle by an ancient sea and some of its inhabitants are still perfectly preserved.

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There is evidence of "handedness" in animals even long before hands developed.

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Ten years ago, the White-rumped Vulture's population was devastated by poisoning but the species has now reappeared at a Cambodian sanctuary.

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A newly discovered spider species has the ability to launch ants into its web.

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Giggling humans and great apes have apparently shared our style of laughter for at least 15 million years.