"Sky is the consciousness...

...of its landscape."

    I reread the title and opening line to one of my Amazonia poems and amazingly am transported not to the great river reflecting constellations but to the north, into this photograph of an island in the fog. The Canadian Shield, its glacial lakes, are caught in meditation, blur of consciousness of sky upon the land. Rationality is misted over, the rat-mind in stillness. Rather the hush of spruce trees  Rather a dock in reverie, no cottage in sight.

     The island lies in Chandos Lake, in the Kawarthas of Ontario, a couple of hours northeast by minivan from Toronto. If you were to locate it on chart or GPS or Google Earth, you would refer to 44°49'30" North and 77°58'43" West. (Thank you, Canadian Council of Geometrics; http://www.geodata.us/canada_names_maps/maps.php?featureid=FAPVZ&f=188.)

     Dive into the image and you arrive on the shore of friendship.The viewscape welcomes you to imagine how laughter can warm the chilliest waters.  You will be enveloped in kindness.

     That's what I discovered on my journey to visit Judy and Walter ("Fergy") Fergusen at their getaway home in late July.  We know no finer hospitality.  I have them to thank for the defining photograph.  All that they gave-- and fog too!

     And a while later a poem to accompany the digitized calm. This one is for you, Judy and Fergy:

In calm wild latitudes

we come to Chandos Lake to lose the granite

in our weighted lives; hope loons, paired, remain

as spruces, boathouse, dock, their stony island disappear.

Fog swallows the Canadian Shield in toto and

alive, we receive the weightless, hopeful silences of loons.

 *** 

     Poetry of place has been much on my hyper-conscious post-vacation brain. The second issue of About Place Journal went live recently.  My congratulations to Editor Michael McDermott on a fine collection of prose and poetry and graphic pleasures.  Thank you, Michael, for publishing my work, a poem based on the best place of all: this my native Third Coast habitat. My turf, my Great Lake.. Please visit: http://aboutplacejournal.org/?page_id=1825.

     Please also visit http://www.sugarmule.com/PDFS/41Final4.pdf.  Sugar Mule's monumental "Women Writing Nature" is 400+ pages of fabulous and immensely varied compendium of contemporary women poets' natural visions.  I am proud to be in the company of Jen Eddy, Maude Larke, Wilda Morris, Sherry O'Keefe, Marge Piercey, Miriam Sagan and Lenore Weiss among dozens of other Nature-inspired writers.. Thank you, guest editor Jeanetta Calhoun Mish. My trio of poems in the collection will lead you south: back to Ontario, then on to Georgia, and again into the Amazon, where I first learned "sky is the consciousness."

    Lastly, I invite you to drop in on http://www.riverpoetsjournal.com/River_Poets_Journal_-_Spring-Summer_-_2012__2_.pdf.  My "Bordering On" will take you to my other native habitat: Florida.  I hope you enjoy the trek. Thank you, Judith Lawrence, oh River Poets Journal editor.

*** 

     I should be doling out gratitude to another pair of wonderfully loving friends, Iris and Gary, who were with Roger and me for four days last week, but that thank-you poem isn't ready for prime-time blog!  I promise the hefty revisions will be worth it. Another posting here for another day of remembering the many blessings of our time together this August.

***  

     The sky is telling me it's lunch-time.  Right here, right now.  Further poetry of place will have to wait.

     Thank you, friends and other readers, for sticking with me through the Mists of Chandos.

Cement Seating on Lake O. Where Poems Begin

Smacked by insomnia yet again and sitting here and thinking about the phrase going off the deep end.

Can you say Humuhumunukunukuapua'a?!

Aloha, mates! I hope this finds you all well and happily returned home with goblets running over with beautiful memories of our time together in Hawai’i. Roger and I are knee=deep already in spring cleaning and garden tending, enjoying balmy days (mostly) on the shores of Lake Ontario. But we don’t want to let go of our adventures in paradise, so … our photo book of the trip is now complete.. Go to "http://karlalinnphotobooks.shutterfly.com" and you can view it. You just need to sign up to be a member of the Shutterfly community. They’ll send me a confirming email so we can be “photo friends” (to use today’s parlance). It’s 80+ pages. You’ll find your smiling face there, too, amid the landscapes and seascapes, flora and fauna, and other peoples of the islands! I’m also sending along my collection of Hawai’I poems, Aloha, Aloha. (Available to blog readers upon email request.) Even if you’re not much of a poetry reader, I think you’ll find something enjoyable – humor is included. And in case you’re curious, a couple notes on the poems to inform your reading; you’ll find: 1) a couple “contemporary sonnets” – don’t expect Shakespeare!—the form has evolved, the rules are more relaxed, so the poet need not fuss with rhymes and such; just make it 14 lines; 2) something called a “skink” – that’s a contemporary form I developed last year in which the poem is limited to five lines, must include two rhymes and the last line must echo the second – it’s tougher than you might think to bring off; 3) the “scherzo” (scherzi in the plural) is another contemporary form developed by the great American poet, William Heyen, a dear, dear friend of ours, and is limited to 13 syllables (not including title) in two lines with a single rhyme – also tougher than you’d think to do well; 4) lots of Hawai’ian words—I fell in love with the language, so musical, such a celebration of vowels; 5) and the poem I read at our “last supper” aboard the Safari Explorer: “Kona Song.” Thank you for listening! Today, in remembering the latest in the Adventures of Karla and Roger, I thank all my fellow travelers on all those expeditions, those from the dory trip down the Grand Canyon, those voyaging with us into the Arctic and Antarctic, those from the Amazon and the Nile, the islands named Galapagos, the islands named Hawai’I, Oceans Atlantic and Pacific, and from Belize, from the Baja, from states and provinces and territories across North America— Today, I bid you peace on Earth. Karla, aka The Vagabond Poet P.S. If you’re interested in reading more of my work in words and photos, please feel free to relax in the pages of my blog: www.karlalinn.blogspot .com. Oh, yeah, I also have books to sell, should you crave more.

Spring at 13.6 Feet above Sea Level

The snowbird migration is about to get under way, and as it does, I realize it is a time of lasts...

...the last visit to Six Mile Cypress Slough where we watched the bare bald cypresses feather out in their soft needles to create a rich green wall of tree life...

...the last outing to Harn's Marsh, a new-to-us birding spot, where we saw for the first time snail kites (aka Everglades kites), a handsome raptor whose chief source of nourishment are pond apple tree snails -- abundant in those marsh waters...

...one last stoll around the loop trail at Caloosahatchee Creeks Preserve, a regular spot just a short half-mile from the condo with a network of boardwalks and sandy trails that delivered to us this winter the first corn snake we'd ever seen...

...a final trip to Lovers Key State Park, our "pet beach," which offered its own surprise: spring's neap tide, the highest tide of the year and one that came up so high on the beach that we beachcombers scrambled inland to avoid getting beach blankets soaked and sea foam spun by brisk westerlies in our hair...

...one more time onto the river for a kayak outing downriver into a preserve that held its own surprise -- a tiny island bird rookery raucous with screeching, gargling fledgling tri-color herons and little blue herons studded with one very handsome roseate spoonbill as shown above...

...and for me, one more "poetry safari" at Caloosahatchee Regional Park where, for the fifth time this winter, I had a night of tenting out and writing to the wee hours of screech owls; the poem below but one of several I wrote in my "quiet time" of pondering the world around me and my inner world.


***

SCHERZI QUINTET: CALOOSAHATCHEE PARK DISPATCH



Hence Serpentine Hours


Coral snake, ribbon snake, corn snake, moccasin—
snakes alive.


Hence Functional Subtropical Camp Décor


Everglades bandanna’s green map—
prayer flag for blue tent.



Hence Water Music


Crickets tonight, anticipating dew,
chirp-chirp thirst.


Henceforward After Dark


Owl, armadillo, most seek me—
prowling, nocturnal.


Hence Essence of Florida


Palm, pine, river, stars, sleeping lizards:
I dream them all.


***

On Friday, we depart for points north, stopping at two state parks for several nights of camping, one on the Ochlockonee River on Florida's "Forgotten Coast" -- my favorite Florida park -- and one on the Atlantic Ocean at Hunting Island, SC -- my favorite state park in the U.S. I'll do my best to bring the warmth and sunshine with me to Western New York when we return to the shores of Lake Ontario.

Blessed be your spring. Let the time of northern firsts begin.

Listen to the Mockingbird

It's February. Already the new year is a month old. Here in South Florida that means we are on the cusp of springtime. I know that from more than a decade of experience in wintering in these subtropics, but yesterday the shift in seasons was made manifest by a mockingbird. For the first time this year I heard his aria rise on the wind from atop the parotis palm waving at the marina's walkway below our lanai. That fellow will find a mate soon, I thought. His complex love song continued for two or more lively, lilting minutes, a virtuoso performance of vernal desire. Then he was off to another perch, his brownish black-and-white wings twirling like a whirligig lawn ornament twirling in a stiff breeze. He returns again this morning on his urgent rounds of the condo grounds, oblivious to Hutch and Ellie, our association president and his wife, uncovering the pool below the avian performer in preparation for their daily laps. As I watch them I'm thinking of the wood violets we'll soon be seeing coming into bloom as we hike the local preserves.

Even friends and loved ones back home in Western New York, who so far have enjoyed a relatively mild winter, are noticing spring's immanence: it's the lengthening of days. An email correspondent, John Heiser, a back-country ranger at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, remarked last week that already there are 47 minutes more daylight since the Winter Solstice.

These days of growing light move at their usual fast clip. There aren't enough hours in the day for this full-time poet to keep up with submission deadlines much less escape for a few hours' writing time. That'll come. Meanwhile, I've enjoyed some successes in my craft that I'd like to share with you, hoping you won't find me immodest to note that...

...January saw the publication in vox poetica of the title poem from my new collection, The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica. (I ask all my faithful readers who ordered a copy to please be patient. Your copy will be arriving soon, so says the publisher!). This link gives you a sneak preview of what to expect: http://poemblog.voxpoetica.com/2012/01/27/the-ice-decides.aspx...

...My environmental activism continues but has in recent months expanded to include social justice issues. A small indication of this newly-found dimension of concern for my fellow humans -- the 99% -- can be glimpsed in five poems recently published in Poems on the Great Recession. See http://poetsonrecession.blogspot.com/2012/01/karla-linn-merrifield.html and you'll read how my activism twines concern for humanity with concern for the planet. Then jump over to http://www.foothillspublishing.com/2012/id44.htm. Poet-activist-friend Dwain Wilder of Rochester, NY, and I co-edited the new Liberty's Vigil, The Occupy Anthology: 99 Poets among the 99%, now available from that link to FooHills Publishing. The book hit bookshelves on January 15 -- only nine weeks after I first conceived it. My sincere thanks to Dwain, the Czarnecki family at FHP and our fellow 97 poets. It's not to be missed...






...And, yesterday, I received word that two of my poems received Honorable Mention prizes in the Lois Beebe Hayna Awards administered by Poetry West. The two poems are published now in the Winter 2011-2012 issue of PW's The Eleventh Muse. Here's one of the two poems:


At “VV 74 Fate Bell”
Archeological Site


Willingly in thirst
I step through
your red portal.

Here is the only
way, one you had
painted with iron

oxide, bone marrow
and sotol on a limestone
wall beneath a broad

canopy streaked black
with manganese. Such
is the tenacious strength

of your art that
Cretaceous-era rock
parts, canyon enfolds

my body. I succumb.
O my Hunter,
I am your Gatherer

come to decipher
the ochre thread
of your story line

one-hundred-eighty
human generations
later, in a fiery flicker

of shamanic time.
For here, this now,
I am Pecos River Woman,

a trace of yellow
yucca twine, who
binds herself slowly



to your sacred staff.
Willingly in hunger
I receive, retrieve

seeds of your enchanted
genius and do return
from my entrancement

within your ancient
stone to my people,
full of your wild mind.

I then sing of your vivid
petroglyphs on the living
side so all may

remember you, remember our
brief prehistory, and this:
young love’s landing.




Believe it or not, that poem, dating to summer '08, went to 21 editors before being accepted -- with honors, no less.


That's all very good news, but life is such that sad news becomes part of this hopeful pre-spring season. I must pause to reflect...

...on the recent sudden death at 78 of beloved friend and colleague Don O'Neil. Don was a big man -- of stature and spirit -- with whom I was friends for nearly 30 years. We worked together in the '80s and '90s as fellow wordsmiths in the ad biz. While a love of the crafted word brought us together, a deeper friendship forged over the years over many a basket of chicken wings at our favorite Rochester haunt, Beale Street, where we shared a passion for political news, geology, movies, Raymond Chandler mysteries.... In the Irish tradition, Don was a storyteller nonpareil with a rebel soul to boot. He was an iconoclast who reminded me not to mindlessly bow to authority. When he laughed, he bellowed from his expansive belly. Oh, Don, my friend, I miss you so.

About a week later, I learned John Kuchera, another "adland" colleague died. Although John and I had not remained in touch during the years since we both left the insanity of the biz behind, I will always remember him for the creative genius he was. Artist, cartoonist, wit, imp. Kuch, the world has lost one of its most generous spirits. But I find comfort in knowing his art -- all those whimsical Kuch cats among it! -- lives on...on the walls of my home as he does in my heart.

Tonight, I will look to the spring stars and find I doubt not two new ones in the heavens above the Caloosahatchee River that slowly rolls by my North Fort Myers windows to the Gulf of Mexico. Goodnight, Don. Goodnight, Kuch. You shine on.


***

Of Snowbirds and Icebergs

It’s November 2, which is hard to believe. Harder to believe is that it’s currently 61 degrees outside and a cabbage white butterfly just fluttered past my library window, looking a bit like a miniature version of the great egret in the above photo.

But just because it’s a balmy day in Western New York doesn’t mean this snowbird and her husband aren’t ready to head to the sunny, warmer climes of Florida (80 degrees in North Fort Myers as I write) where our condo on the Caloosahatchee awaits. A week from today, we’ll have turned south for a leisurely 1400-mile drive to our subtropical home, stopping along the way to visit friends in West Virginia and in Georgia. I’m packed, ready to go. Roger will get there by the time we’re due to pull out of the driveway.

But meanwhile, we’re busy saying goodbye to friends and neighbors, running a few errands (get those Rx’s filled!), and walking the roads along farm fields now shorn of cornstalks and soybeans. The fields look naked, even more so since the last of the Canada geese have departed for fresh fields, warmer waters.

But right now, my mind’s eye turns even farther south…



…to Antarctica!

That’s because it’s time for me to invite you to order a copy of my new book, The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica from Finishing Line Press.

Now, you can travel with me on a journey to the ends of the earth and partake in our many beautiful discoveries in Antarctica.

Maybe you’ve been there and long to see it again (and smell the penguin rookeries). Or maybe it’s on your bucket list and you are scrimping and saving for the expensive expedition. Or maybe you’re an armchair traveler who relishes others’ adventures to the Earth’s far-flung places. Or maybe (except for the movie Happy Feet) Antarctica isn’t even on your mental map, merely a word that means “cold.”

Whatever your outlook, now’s the time to (re)discover the magic of Antarctica – for only $14 (plus shipping). Just order your copy (or copies) of my newest book The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica, from Finishing Line Press.

As award-winning poet Beau Cutts points out: “You have never before read a collection of poems about the coldest-highest-windiest place on planet Earth!” But now you can, in this unique collection.

You’ll meet those whimsical (and smelly) penguins and other arctic birds. You’ll chase whales across rough seas. You’ll come to understand that Antarctica is far more “The Blue Continent” than “The White Continent” as you face icebergs the size of city blocks. You’ll even encounter the enchanting green of the island continent – its 500-year-old mosses. And you’ll watch as global warming tightens its grip on the great storehouses of ice.

I hope you’ll want to travel with us across the famed Drake Passage to a land of “beauty, terror, silence,/ the blue awe of Antarctica.”

To entice you, I’ll share one of my favorite poems from the collection:

Penguinissimo


Lo! I’m awake, I think, and blinking.
Because what to my wondering eye
has appeared this bright morning
right outside my cabin porthole?
Penguins! Batches of chinstraps,
gaggles of plump toddling birds
in black berets, black capes,
white bibs and—pink sneakers!
Waddle, hop, waddle, waddle, hop, hop,
sli-i-i-i-ide to the fast-ice edge
for an early hour’s frigid dive.
Make way for pudgy, hungry,
flipper-flapping penguins
and penguins tooting their kazoo voices:
Krill, krill, krill, we’ll get our fill!
And off the briny brink they go—
plop, plop, plop, plop, splash—
into the deep blue smorgasbord,
into the rich Antarctic seas.
Another fine day gets under way
in penguin paradise. Ah, penguin glory!

***

Please order a copy now.

I’ll be frank: Orders placed now will determine how many copies FLP prints—of if they print the book at all. (I need to help FLP sell a minimum 50 books from now through the pre-sale period ending Nov. 23; such are the vicissitudes of small-press publishing these days.)

It’s easy. To order your copy/copies of The Ice Decides, go to this FLP direct link http://www.finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?products_id=134

I thank you, the penguins thank you and you’ll thank yourself for voyaging with me to “The White Continent.”

And I thank those faithful “fans” who’ve already ordered copies!

Meanwhile, you can enjoy the many pleasures of the new issue of The Centrifugal Eye where I work as assistant editor and book review columnist. You’ll discover a chorus of eloquent poetic voices (including yours truly, if I may be so immodest), book reviews (don’t miss the one for my previous book, The Urn; writer Danielle Blasko does a boffo job of tackling the book) and an interview with and essay by poet Maureen Kingston. Just hop over to http://centrifugaleye.com/ and click on the “New Issue” tab! Plunge into the beauty.

Happy November. See you next time from Florida.

Belated Equinox Reflections

***

Entomologically Correct

Last night the wind
in a rush shifted
south to north swish
goodly wind, tail wind
wing wind,great wind of insects
seeking passage out of Canada
by the legions while there's time
dragonfliers in formation
sporting their dozen spots
monarch butterfliers willy-nilly
dabbing sunlight orange
for crossing Erie’s open waters
in buzz, in flutter
with faith in the genes
of their tiny bodies
today they leap
Point Pelee to Sandusky
Ontario to Ohio
nation to nation

as they depart we marvel
small wonders of evolution
small wonders of migration
so small, so far, this autumn

***

Greetings, friends. Roger and I have returned home from a fifth summer odyssey into Canada replenished from our time at Point Pelee National Park and nearby Wheatley Provincial Park on the north shore of Lake Erie. Hiking, birdwatching (a bald eagle! a black-throated blue warbler!), smooshing around our campsite overlooking a creek and its marsh. And the beautiful insects you see here. We all recognize the monarch but I wonder how many of us have seen one that's tagged as pictured above. Yes, that white dot is a researcher's tag identifying the individual for the record books of monarch migrations. I'd never seen such a thing. Imagine affixing it to that delicate wing.

The other fellow is a twelve-spotted dragonfly. He was a new one on me; I had to look him up in my Audubon Field Guide to Insects & Spiders. He too was heading south.

We watched hundreds of monarchs and thousands of dragonflies of several species wing south over Erie's open waters--a two-hour journey for them. We marveled.

Then we cursed, driven out of camp by driving rain. But, we returned home sated on the beauties of these bugs and their pursuit of their evolutionary imperative.

Small wonders, indeed. An autumn blessing.








And another: