Book of Days
BOOK OF DAYS: A POET AND NATURALIST TRIES TO FIND POETRY IN EVERY DAY
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Posted with BlogsyFebruary 17: Early bird
Kristen Lindquist
Every year about this time I receive spreadsheets from an ornithologist at Colby College on which to record the spring arrival dates of bird species in my region. I guess they triggered something in my subconscious.
I know the singing phoebe
is an illusion.
February 16: Wren
Kristen Lindquist
Yesterday, snow and temperatures hovered around zero; today, rain and nearly 50 degrees. Even so, I wasn't expecting to hear a Carolina Wren calling loudly across the street when I left for work this morning. A southern bird that was a real rarity in Maine when I was a kid, over the past decade or so the resilient Carolina Wren has begun to settle in here; more and more seem to be wintering over. But it's not yet as established and abundant as the cardinal, another southern species that made its way north, or the Mourning Dove, which we take for granted now but which was an exciting sight for Maine birders back in the 1950s.
trilling loudly in the rain
sounds grateful for the thaw.
February 15: Ripped from the headlines
Kristen Lindquist
The Seattle Aquarium has made the public display of mating octopuses a very popular annual Valentine's Day event. This year, however, the spectacle was cancelled because they couldn't find a female big enough to hold her own against their 70-lb. male octopus, Kong. Giant Pacific Octopuses are normally kept separated in aquariums (and live predominately solitary lives in the wild), because they not uncommonly kill and eat one another. Clearly the aquarium did not want to promote an event in which the hapless female might experience love and death in such short order, in full view of the soft-hearted public.
Today's haiku was an actual online headline: found poetry at its best.
Octopus mating event
cancelled due to
cannibalism concerns.
February 14: Puzzle Zen
Kristen Lindquist
Valentine's Day--
the puzzle takes us hours,
piece by piece we make it whole.
 |
| Most excellent puzzle from Liberty Puzzles (468 pieces) |
February 13: Snow day
Kristen Lindquist
Ten degrees, wind howling.
Curled up with a book
on the Salem witch trials.
Curled up with a book
on the Salem witch trials.
February 12: Crescent moon
Kristen Lindquist
February 11: Yearning
Kristen Lindquist
Cat inside chatters
at leaping squirrels, perched crows
always out of reach.
at leaping squirrels, perched crows
always out of reach.
February 10: Itsy-bitsy spider
Kristen Lindquist
Strangely saddened by
the loss of the spider
above our shower.
February 9: Garden of Earthly Delights
Kristen Lindquist
A new interactive website allows you to take a virtual tour of Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch's famous painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights." A trip through his fantastical triptych is a "trip" indeed, especially when you can look at it this closely.
In Bosch's "Garden"
I'm distracted by the birds
but only briefly.
In Bosch's "Garden"
I'm distracted by the birds
but only briefly.
February 8: What the winter sky has to say
Kristen Lindquist
Yesterday I participated in a poetry reading at Brunswick's Curtis Public Library that was part of the town's Longfellow Days. We were each asked to read a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in addition to our own work. I chose my favorite (and seasonally appropriate) "Snow-Flakes," a line of which begins today's haiku as new snow falls past my window.
This is the poem of the air--
cold syllables fall,
slow litany.
This is the poem of the air--
cold syllables fall,
slow litany.