River dream

I cannot say, Child, what you might be experiencing within, but I can tell you I dreamed
that we were sailing along a river with green overhanging boughs
and that the waters before us were only troubled by a succession
of indentations made by tiny feet running rapidly across
—a little Jesus lizard, there in the recesses, trying to catch
or, on second thought, cavorting with, a dragonfly which shimmered and skimmered
away just as the swan drifted into view, its white feathers transforming as it neared,
changing from white to gold flushed with crimson
and then the eagle, gliding low over the glimmering water, huge, like life itself,
its curved yellow beak closed, its sharp eye affixed on us, not on the hunt,
merely acknowledging our presence
and so we drifted on and I didn’t even realize until the shore loomed
before us, rocky and steep, that we’d been riding in a little wooden boat
that navigated the river by its own power, not ours, to land us
right where we needed to be, and that we’d be able to navigate
this embankment, too, for there amid the stones and earth were steps
perfectly placed for our climb.

Cincinnati – Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum ‘An Unreal Moment, and a Gift.’David Paul Ohmer CC BY 2.0.

*******
with thanks to the Two Writing Teachers community
for the place to share Slices of Life
even when they are but dreams

Misty reflection

There’s a scientific explanation
for the mist rising
from the glassy ponds
along my morning commute

then there’s poetry
the perceiving of
elemental transitions
autumnal ghosts rising
from the silver surface

the old heron
is still there by water’s edge
not wading
but watching
in the cool gray
in-betweenness

quite possibly studying me
an unnatural phenomenon
a recurring phantasm
passing through
its world

Lumia Shot: Foggy WatersTom Mrazek. CC BY 2.0.

Acts of faith haiku

do it anyway
acts of faith are rewarded
refueling the soul

One little ruby-throated female visited the feeder this afternoon. Although days had passed without a hummingbird sighting, I refilled the feeders and left them out anyway, in case…

Adopt-a-crow?

In the wake of
my hummingbirds’
departure
it has been suggested
that I befriend
a crow.
Hmmm.
I don’t know…

American Crow – Corvus brachyrhynchos. jpmckenna – Plotting 2020 AdventuresCC BY-NC 2.0.

—A crow’s endearing pose? To give them their due, crows are highly intelligent; they use tools. They play. They mourn. And this, from the Corvus entry on Wikipedia:

Crows have demonstrated the ability to distinguish individual humans by recognizing facial features. Evidence also suggests they are one of the few nonhuman animals, along with insects like bees or ants, capable of displacement (communication about things that are not immediately present, spatially or temporally).

Not tiny and fairy-like, but certainly enchanting…furthermore, as I finished this post and went outside, a crow called —caw-caw—from the pines…

Crows on the cross

Crows, historically associated with death, are highly intelligent birds with powerful memory. In folklore they convene to determine capital punishment for wrongdoers—a murder of crows, apropos. Yet they mourn their dead and will even place small sticks or other objects around a deceased fellow crow, in a sort of funeral rite.

On Sunday morning, crows perched atop the steeple cross at church as congregants arrived. Harbingers of death? Casters of judgment? Consider the cross, an instrument of capital punishment, particularly of someone “who knew no sin” offering himself as a sacrifice for all the wrongdoing of humankind…For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved (John 3:17 NKJV); For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV).

So sit the crows
on the steeple cross
a judgment passed
a death sentence cast

yet overturned and overcome
so long ago
—one wonders what the crows know.