#1
Nest Cam
( photo from Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
It’s 38 degrees and blustery
on the campus at Cornell.
On top of a light post in the parking lot,
the red-tailed hawk broods
over her nest of three eggs.
Her mate spells her every several hours.
Fluffed up, looking smaller and younger
than she is, she also looks calm but alert.
Traffic doesn’t bother her, nor the lights
in the partking lot.
Brisk winds tousle her gorgeous feathers.
She turns her head to the sound
of car alarms and crows.
Some recently added evergreen spriggs
add color to the brown stick nest.
From her brown and white dappled feathers.
the red tail sticks out sharply, stiff and rusty.
#2 Turtlephobia
I know someone who fears turtles,
The tiny ones, green quarters, I used to buy at
Woolworths
and nurture in my childhood,
the shy brilliant box ones,
making their way across Route 40,
the snapping ones
sunning themselves in the ponds
at Blackwater.
She thinks they are snakes under cover.
Their plodding unnerves her –
might be plotting.
She, who plows through life like a bulldozer,
Reactive,
unmindful of her own shell,
huffing, watchful,
on the defense.
#3 The Blue
Flowers of April
The blue flowers of April
showed up three weeks early this year,
starry stems of Ajuga,
bells of grape hyacinth,
thumbnails and thibles of creeping phlox.
Even the blue butterfly, fragile
and penny sized.
Virginia Bluebells with their
tumblers of Spring.
#4 As the
darkness clears away
Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
Melody of minor notes and
Haunting incense,
Mysteries in the morning
As the color returns to the world.
#5 Camera Obscura
Chamber of darkness
little known room,
Mysterious, remote,
secluded, cryptic
device,
but able to capture an image
and project it
onto paper
or onto an oval table
in the center of a dark room.
Large ones
resided in domed sheds,
entertaining
the
viewers inside,
who
saw a remarkably accurate –
but slightly darker –
reflection of whatever its pinprick of light
observes,
with
an almost imperceptible
double image.
#6
Theremin
Weird and funny
Waves of sound
Gathered like invisible cobwebs
By the hand of a deft musician
of physics.
Therein lies the pheromone,
The vitamin,
The ermine
of music.
#7
Holy Saturday
“He will revive us after two
days;
on the third day he will raise us up,
to live in his presence.
Let us know, let us strive to know the LORD;
as certain as the dawn is his coming…” 1 Hos 6:1-6
If Macrina could argue Gregory out of his grief,
All the while softpedaling her own whistled breath,
So can I calm my sister with my hand on her sharklike shoulderblades
Sharpened by cancer.
There’s a land of mild and homey
,not milk and honey,
,not milk and honey,
Waiting for us across the lake.
Where every garment rolled in blood
Will turn to grass stains and pollen powder.
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