The Nature of Things

On trips to the coast, I have sometimes seen frigatebirds and truly they are magnificent! A bird that lives up to its name. The Magnificent Frigatebird by Ada Limon Is it okay to begin with the obvious? I am full of stones—             is it okay not to look out this window, but to look out another? A mentor once said,  You can't start a poem with a man looking              out a window.   Too many men looking out a window . What about a woman? Today is a haunting. One last orange             on the counter: it is a dead fruit. We swallow dead things. Once, in Rio near Leblon, large seabirds soared over the vast             South Atlantic Ocean. I had never seen them before. Eight-foot wingspan and gigantic in their confident gliding, black,             with a red neck like a wound or a hidden treasure. Or both. When I looked it up, I learned it was the Magnificent Frigatebird.             It sounded like that enormity of a bird had named itself. What a pleasure to say,  I am Magni

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment :                                                                                                          Photo by Susan Borders Evans The orb weavers are out and doing their thing. They are wonderful critters. Please be kind to them. *~*~*~* Defending Nature is a dangerous business in a world where at least three defenders are killed every week. *~*~*~* Unfortunately, Nature must be defended not only against those who harm intentionally but also those who harm through carelessness .  *~*~*~* Fall migration is in full swing. According to BirdCast , nearly two million birds passed over my county last night. *~*~~*~* Sometimes humans actually manage to assist Nature . This was the case of the Bald Ibis in Europe. *~*~*~* A scientific investigation has concluded that Earth vibrated for nine days after a landslide and mega-tsunami in Greenland in 2023. Figuring that out took the efforts of about seventy people from fifteen

So, I had my reading list all set, and then I heard that there was a new Vera Stanhope mystery out. Reading list tossed aside, I jumped right into that new book. I regret nothing. I will always drop everything for a new Vera mystery for she is probably my favorite of all the fictional detectives of my acquaintance. I strongly identify with the middle-aged, frumpy, overweight Vera. ( I wonder why that is? ) The Dark Wives of the title refers to a stone monument in the Northumberland countryside. But the story itself revolves around Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens in the coastal village of Longwater.  The mystery begins when a dog walker discovers a man's murdered body outside Rosebank one early morning. The victim turns out to be a Rosebank staff member named Josh. He had been scheduled to work the previous night but he never showed up.  At the same time, one of the home's residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spence has disappeared. Is it possible that this child committe

The beginning of September means that the year is winding down. But wasn't it only yesterday that it was February? It must be true that the older we get the more time flies. This year has seemed but a brief moment. Now my yard is aflutter with the autumn's yellow sulphur butterflies and I wonder what happened on that day of one September that the poet never could forget... September by Helen Hunt Jackson The golden-rod is yellow; The corn is turning brown; The trees in apple orchards With fruit are bending down. The gentian's bluest fringes Are curling in the sun; In dusty pods the milkweed Its hidden silk has spun. The sedges flaunt their harvest, In every meadow nook; And asters by the brook-side Make asters in the brook. From dewy lanes at morning the grapes' sweet odors rise; At noon the roads all flutter With yellow butterflies. By all these lovely tokens September days are here, With summer's best of weather, And autumn's best of cheer. But none of all thi

  A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is one that most of us have not seen and perhaps will never see. It is the largest of North America's auklet species, the Rhinoceros Auklet . It is a seabird that nests in burrows or deep crevices on rocky islands and cliffs and winters at sea and is decreasing in numbers. *~*~*~* Electricity generated by solar power is increasing across the country. Moreover, solar farms not only produce power, in many cases they produce habitats for pollinators and other wildlife . *~*~*~* Expeditions to the sunken RMS Titanic are still making discoveries . *~*~*~* More proof that everything is connected: New research has linked crashing bat populations and infant mortality . *~*~*~* Chimpanzees and other apes, just like humans, use meaningful gestures to help communicate and make their point.   *~*~*~* Flash floods can happen even in deserts. *~*~*~* According to a report in

It's always been one of my favorites of Robert Frost's poems since I first discovered it in high school. Maybe it's because I, too, was once a "swinger of birches."    Birches by Robert Frost When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy’s been swinging them. But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust— Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see their trunks arching in the woods