Category: animals
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Tippy
When mom fell at home and broke her leg, she was moved to a rehab facility. We knew at 92 she’d never return home and suspect dad knew, too. He insisted we move them into a facility where he lived on one floor and mom on another. Their little dog, Tippy, went to live with…
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What snapping turtles can teach us about politics
Adrift offshore a dole of turtles try to sunbathe on the same log. It rolls over each time one climbs up. They refuse to stop jostling and spinning for a place in the sun adrift offshore in a shallow, muddy pond 2-9-23
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A Double kind of negative morning
In the creek behind our daughter’s house greening undergrowth, hyperactive birds, tree frog choral sound track. In a distant somewhere, a fleeing train calls out it has room for one more. Me…I sit on our daughter’s patio adrift in an ambience of now not going no where 1-31-23
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haiku rain
tree frogs harmonize descants, trills and drumming rain listen under eaves 1-30-23
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Lady of the lake
On the far side of water twenty feet from shore she stood looking at me look at her looking at me look at her… wondering why I came each morning and stood in the same place counting the name of God five times on each knuckle. I wondered why she was not standing knee deep…
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Along the fence line
On a winter day I asked the bare bush that invades the fence line near water’s edge about spring and the bright green anoles that chase along the rail and flush their necks coral pink hoping nubile anoles might see. It replied, “Soon, old man, soon” 1-19-23
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Augury
Because there are no worms or flies this time of year, I will not begrudge a murder of crows a careless squirrel, lying dead in the road. Every once in awhile an easy meal’s okay. Maybe they’ll be more cautious than roadkill squirrels and won’t adorn a grille 1-18-23
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The last big freeze
New Year’s Day, high overhead behind partly cloudy skies jets rumble. On muddy banks turtles return to sun. Dark shells absorb energy, waken dreams of summer. Unbeguiled by a change in the weather, I mourn the ones that did not make it through the last big freeze and the citizen survivors of another missile attack…
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how many
how many generations of evolved fish only swam the surface near shore before the first one dared walk on land 12-31-22
My husband's poetry 