Not-Spring

Where did the winter go since my last posting? In Western New York, the answer is: “Not away.” It’s been unseasonably cold since I returned north from Florida two weeks ago. A late-February expedition into the Baja of Mexico to see whales seems eons ago and my Artist-in-Residency program in the Everglades even deeper in time. While winter continues to have its grip on the shores of Lake Ontario, I try to hold on to the warmth of the south and of Mexico.

Photographs and poems of the Baja trip help me hold onto the magic of being among the great cetaceans – five whale species, including mating humpbacks with the randy males ramming each other to win breeding rights to the evasive female. This photograph of a humpback’s flukes is a clear reminder of the majesty of these mammals, our cousins who also remind me of how insignificant is humankind. And how fleeting is our time here on Earth.

That must have been on my mind when I wrote this poem.

The Price of Souvenirs


We leave something of our souls
in our footprints in foreign lands
and take only these photographs:

The one where I left a flicker of myself
reflected in a gray whale’s eye
in Magdalena Bay in the Baja of Mexico.

One where I left a scrap of being
in Los Islotes on those rocks
of seals and pelicans in the Sea of Cortez.

You saw me amid cardon cactus and elephant trees
leaving one last innocence aside
on Espiritu Santo like skin drying in desert air.

You have seen how I leave a dream behind
among Pacific turtle bones and sand dollars
on a bleached beach by an ocean of death.


***

Meanwhile, I’ve home and settling into a spring brightened by poetry readings and gatherings with friends. Snow may be yet on the ground, but the promise of spring’s renewal is kept by birds at the feeders and buds thick on the trees in the neighborhood. I feel the warmth within. I hope you do, too.

Morning in the Everglades

Greetings, readers!

I have surfaced for a few days from my artist-in-residency in Everglades National Park...and will be heading soon to the Baja for a Lindblad expedition to see the gray whales in their nursing lagoons.

The Everglades residency experience was eye-opening in so many ways...through writing and editing poetry, a poetry reading, photography, botanizing, hiking, biking -- being. It will stay with me forever. That is the nature of the Everglades.

Among my accomplishments was a collection of 19 "cameos" -- miniature portraits of people in Everglades history dating from the 1500s to the present. Each one is 100 syllables long (or 200 if a double cameo) and is based on historical fact presented with mythic embellishments. The research for the poems was almost as fun doing as the poems themselves. So I will leave you with one in the series...about Guy Bradley, the future park's first game warden, one who was murdered by plume hunters at the beginning of the 20th century.

See you next time with tales and whales' tails from the Baja.

***

1905, Guy Bradley Cameo: Dead or Alive?


To St. Bradley,
patron of subtropical birds,
our latter-day Assisi,
our Everglades martyr
to its causes, I pray.

How unceremoniously they took aim
and shot you, those greedy hunters,
those ravaging devils, that plague
of egrets great and snowy,
of hierophantic great blue herons, too.
Those killers in the rookeries
are dead. But you live on
among the glossy ibis,
a feather spirit, listening.

Ever the Everglades

Everglades Horizon #1


Limestone
sawgrass
panther
dew
If I do not evaporate
in winter’s drought,
I will become
the summer slough.

Everglades Horizon #2


Mangrove
osprey
hurricane
mosquito
If I am not lost
in the ten-thousand watery labyrinths,
I will become an island.

***

Greetings from Chokoloskee Island in the western Everglades where I've made a base for exploring both Big Cypress National Preserve to the northeast and the 10,000 Islands of the Gulf just beyond the small wharf at the campground. Some hiking, some kayaking, some lazing on the verandah watching the pelicans, spotted sandpipers (a bird-first) and terns while they watch for anglers to return with their catch and the detritus that will fall their way when cobia, snook, snapper and sheephead become filets.

On Sunday, February 1, I return to the eastern Everglades to commence my two-week artist-in-residency program where much inspiration awaits, including the splendor of purple gallinules like the handsome fellow in the above photo. In addition to giving a couple poetry readings, my goal is "to contemplate the Universe from the Holy Land of the Everglades." More specifically, I wish to complete a cycle of short poems -- "Cameos" -- that pay tribute to key figures in Everglades history. I'm sure other poems will arrive on the wings of birds to celebrate the flora and fauna of this unique place on Earth. The thought of unfettered hours to write (I'll be "off the grid!" and not much concerned about cooking and other quotidian tasks) is thrilling. Update to follow upon my return from the wild, the wonderful River of Grass.

A Beckoning Beacon

Greetings from the Atlantic coast in Florida near Ponce Inlet where this 1887 lighthouse -- Florida's tallest -- guards the entrance from ocean to the Halifax River. The imposing tower, second highest brick lighthouse in the U.S. (only the Cape Hatteras lighthouse is taller), stands stately guard over the tricky inlet. While no longer operated by the U.S. Coast Guard, it still functions as a "private" lighthouse, lovingly restored and maintained by a non-profit foundation that has even restored the 1933 first-order Fresnel-lens light. On such a beautiful day as yesterday when I visited the handsome structure, it stood out for its rich brick-red color against a flawless blue sky. No, I did not climb to the top for a lighthouse keeper's view of the surrounding waters, but stood humbled beneath it with respect for its architect, masons and the generous people who restored it and the mryiad lenses and prisms in its lamp. Sometimes mankind gets things right. The Ponce Inlet Lighthouse is one of our more admirable achievements.

Everglades Bound

Thick the limestone base
but porous; ancient raindrops
garnered quench all thirst.

This river of grass
harbors pineland keys – soughing
an ocean of wind.

***

Tomorrow (December 15), my husband Roger and I leave for the winter...heading south once again as snowbirds to warmer climes. As usual, we'll be playing "campground hobos," staying at a number of state and federal campgrounds in Georgia and in the Sunshine State.

But one change in our usual travel routine is in store: The Everglades National Park Artist in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE) program has named me its resident artist for February 2009. The program, which provides an on-site apartment in the heart of the park, offers artists the opportunity to live and work in this unique environment. The poems I hope to complete under this program will contribute to the public understanding and appreciation of Everglades National Park. It is hoped that these works will characterize the Everglades for present and future generations, giving park visitors and the general public an opportunity to see our heritage through the eyes, and ears of the contributing artists. I will have the opportunity to interact with park rangers and give poetry readings during my stay. This is my favorite place on Earth. That I will have unfettered time to write, write, write about it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’m so grateful to be an AIRIE poet. I'm also grateful that Roger has been so obliging about my two-week disappearing act. He'll be tucked into a lovely little campground on Chokoloskee Island in the Western Everglades ... no doubt reading, reading, reading while I go about a quiet writer's life. Look for updates in future posts.

Meanwhile, it's time to hit the road.

Think Warm, Think Peace

As we head into the holiday season with Thanksgiving just around the corner, arctic cold has settled over western New York, thanks to the gale-force winds called Alberta Clippers that have barreled south out of the high north. Even folks in the deep south are feeling the chill, so reports my friend and poet Beau Cutts from Georgia. Brrr!

So I'm trying to think warm thoughts and have been looking at photographs from trips to balmy Florida in winters past. I took this photo of coral reefs and mangrove islets in the Florida Keys from the front seat of an open-cockpit biplane last winter. I ponder the turquoise water and imagine snorkling off the bow of the fishing boat. My fingers and toes are still cold, but I'm warmer inside.

Among the many, many things for which I am thankful for this season, not the least of which are my husband, family, friends, and President-elect Barack Obama (!!!!!!), I'm grateful to a fellow named James Penha, editor of The New Verse News (http://newversenews.blogspot.com/), who nominated my poem "The Shells" for a Pushcart Prize, one of the more prestigious literary accolades. It was a first for me and I'm honored. It also came as quite a surprise. This poem is one of my few anti-war poems, kind of a black sheep in the body of my work. So to have it singled out for a Pushcart nomination was a most pleasant shock. The poem is a reminder that our country is still at war...these five-plus years later from the "eve of the war in Iraq" of which the poem speaks.

Now at least there's hope that the war will come to an end. I dedicate the poem today to Barack Obama, peacemaker.

The Shells


On the eve of the war in Iraq
she was contemplating opercula,
small doorways of protection for snails
—ocean’s moon snails, slipper snails, also
augers & whelks of more intricate shells.

On the eve of the war in Iraq
she reminisced about hermit crabs
that tuck their tender hind ends
into any abandoned shell that suits,
taking shelter from predators.

On the eve of the war in Iraq
loggerheads in their formidable shells
were yet far off shore, so she touched
instead six silver turtles pinned to her vest,
gesture to totems of spiritual safety.

On the eve of the war in Iraq
she was reminded that she is:
human, she has no shell –
only the simulacrum of the warriors’
so-called shells that were put to use
on the morning of the war in Iraq.

***

Happy holidays. Remember: Celebrate Earth!

Autumn Greetings from Home

Corn Fantasy


Acres of August corn crowd
to the shoulders on four corners.
I creep through the intersection—
cautious, aware: I am in over my head
in fields to every horizon.
The corn hovers above like an army of green

seraphim protecting me as far as I can see.

I slow down driving between their handsome ranks.
But the stalks are restless, like me,
as if wrestling with competing personalities.
On the outside, the plant admits to chaos—
its tassle-do tossed by stiff mid-day breezes,
and, like my own gray hair, its silk tangles
But beneath the husk all is tidiness.
Each sweet ear I bite into this autumn
yields six hundred kernels, arranged in even bands.

So orderly, the kernels of corn I swallow.

I come to a full stop
thinking of Mayans, Huicholes, the Anasazi,
and other peoples of the corn.
I pull off to the side, park, get out, push into
the rows of corn near Peter-Smith and Lakeshore;
I join the spirits in the maize.

***

The Autumn Equinox occurs tomorrow at 11:44 EST...and the fields are full of the season's bouty--corn, pumpkins, cabbabes, beans, carrots, apples, pears... After a delicious summer (som much fresh seafood!) in the Canadian Maritimes (alas, without email most of the time and few opportunities to update my blog!), I've settled back into the routine of teaching freshman writing, visiting with friends and enjoying the beauty of Lake Ontario in my front yard. It is indeed a blessing to be home.