Kingfisher Dreams

Creating Mandalas is a calming exercise. 
I am reading a book about the symbolism of colors, numbers, and shapes involved, but I am not yet ready to discuss that here. 

This week I have a new micro essay and more previously unpublished poems

Dream of the Kingfisher

My rattling call is sure to startle.
You think I scold when you intrude?
That call is no scold, it’s a chortle.
I laugh at your presence here.

You are amused by my form,
head and beak too large for my body,
but can you leave that path, 
and enter my watery domain?

When you sink to your ankles in mud, 
spend panicked minutes pulling free, 
I will laugh from high in a branch,
attired in blue and white raiment  
as I imagine you spending hours 
cleaning mud from boots 
and scrubbing filth from trousers. 

Animal Thoughts

When Annie Dillard described the deflating frog and the giant water bug in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she showed neither sympathy for the dying frog nor admiration or disgust for the giant water bug that fed on the frog. She raised philosophical questions there, as she did in the passage about a moth consumed by flame in Holy the Firm, but seemed to pass no judgement.

I cannot keep myself from identifying with the creatures described, but favor neither the poor frog that lost its life nor the giant water bug with a ravenous body to nourish and possibly eggs to lay. Each lives out their limited span of time and does what they must. Who am I to pass judgement? Should I value the eater more than the eaten, or vice versa? I think not, but some naturalists have used such argumments, possibly in an attempt to to create sympathy for the natural world.

Some naturalists defend bats because they eat mosquitoes, but I value them simply because they are unique creatures perfectly suited to the life they live. When people ask, “What good is a fly?” I have no answer. One might as well ask, “what good are you?” For that matter, what good am I?

In the lowly fly’s favor, I must point out that the fly will not inflict his thoughts on either of us by writing essays like this one. Then again, what an interesting world we would live in if flies, dolphins, and draft horses wrote essays about the nature of life.

Some humans have created literature from an animal’s point of view. My microfiction piece, “Bull Gator’s Lament” is an example. It ultimately reveals more of what the author thinks about the alligator’s life than what the alligator might be thinking.

For further exploration of animals and our human view of them, see Billy Collins’ wonderful Ted Talk about what dog’s (probably) think. He reads his excellent poems, “The Revenat,” and, “A Dog on His Master.” Robin Wall Kimmerer

Coffee Shop

Look at that old hound dog
nose glued to his laptop as if
that keypad was freshly turned earth 
fertile with the scent of hares and doves.

Look at that tall shrub, hair drooping
as if she were a weeping willow. 
She searches out knowledge from spreadsheets, 
like water through her roots. 

Then look at me, an observant owl 
watching to see what will cross my path, 
hoping to find a poem hidden in this scene,
and waiting to leave when dusk arrives. 

The rest of this post, with another micro essay and one more poem is for paid subscribers.