Orange

I promised more poetry, so here are a few poems from my self-published booklet, Healing and Conflict. I call it a booklet rather than a chapbook because it included color photographs. I have just a few copies remaining, so it is out of print.

Orange
A Prose Poem

Orange is a cave salamander with black spots, curled around a damp rock, bulging eyes watching for lurking predators or tiny insect prey. Hidden away in remnant undisturbed caves, they seek shelter as habitat vanishes.

Orange is a milkweed flower waiting for a pollinator, waiting to grow into a pod unzipped by turgid water forces, spreading silk parachutes on the wind, each seed drifting with fluff, ready to grow.

Orange and black is a Monarch Butterfly sipping nectar from orange milkweed flowers. Its caterpillars will feed on milkweed leaves, take up a poison which causes predators to spit them out or die eating them. 

Orange is a truck spraying roundup or other herbicides, perhaps even Agent Orange, 2,4, D in chemical terms. It was sprayed on Vietnamese jungles to defeat people called unfriendlies. Years later, American veterans of the Vietnam War suffered the effects of exposure to Agent Orange.  

Today it is considered for agricultural use, where it will kill milkweed with orange flowers, prevent it from competing with corn for soil nutrients. The death of Monarch Butterflies is an unfortunate side effect, an example of collateral damage. Already, they are perishing.

International orange is the color of a fungus that grows on scorched soil after forest fires and range fires. Will it witness the dying gasp of the last Monarch Butterfly, the desiccation of salamanders?

Orange was Previously Published in Quill and Parchment.

Full Speed Ahead

I wonder how there came to be 
a plastic island in the sea.

No challenge to avoid a crash. 
Cleave right through; our course is brash.

Beware if barnacles adorn your boat.
They’ll snag each plastic piece afloat.

Cigarette lighters float in the wrack
thick as bird lice on a heron’s back.

Old bleach bottle and plastic bag 
are sent to the landfill and covered with slag. 

The plastics escape with torrential rain.
They go down the river like soap down the drain.

Birds and turtles feed on this mess.
Dead in a week would be my guess.

So keep your plastic safe at home. 
Don’t send it out to sea to roam. 

Spirit Bird

Every time I see cranes,
a door opens into the spirit world.
They arrive to bring news of winter
and depart with the promise of spring.
They carry messages between worlds.
 
Their arrival is always anticipated, but
unexpectedly, they arrive and call.
Said to mate for life, they dance
when reunited after a long separation.
Their longing calls fill my heart.
 
Departing this world,
I will know I am bound
for blessed realms
if cranes accompany me.

”Spirit Bird” previously appeared in Number One, a literary magazine from Volunteer State Community College, Gallatin, Tennessee. 

Meanwhile, here are links to my journalism pieces published in The Hellbender Press.

My interview with a rattlesnake expert: https://hellbenderpress.org/news/rattled.

I reviewed Sounds Wild and Broken, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction by David George Haskell: https://hellbenderpress.org/news/the-sounds-of-science.

 My article on the North Carolina Snorkel Trail: https://hellbenderpress.org/news/wnc-creek-snorkels.

My article about Tennessee’s wintering Sandhill Cranes: https://hellbenderpress.org/news/sandhills-fly-in.

My story about the Tennessee Aquarium’s program to restore Lake Sturgeon in the Tennessee River: https://hellbenderpress.org/news/sturgeon-release.

My story about an exhibit of art made from washed ashore plastics: https://hellbenderpress.org/news/like-a-message-in-a-bottle-plastic-washed-ashore-signals-a-growing-threat-to-our-health.   

The Trails and Trilliums Festival at Tennessee’s South Cumberland State Park: https://hellbenderpress.org/news/feedbag/hike-and-learn-at-trails-and-trilliums-festival-in-south-cumberland-state-park.

Get off the Grid Fest in Chattanooga: https://hellbenderpress.org/news/middle-tennessee-is-a-leader-in-electric-car-production-what-better-place-to-celebrate-alternative-energy.

Keeping cigarette buts out of the waterways. https://hellbenderpress.org/news/keep-your-butts-out-of-the-tennessee-river.

The Story of a Wildlife Rehabilitator in Chattanooga: https://hellbenderpress.org/news/wildlife-rehabbers-return-birds-to-the-sky-in-chattanooga.

An interview with Hellbender researcher Brian Miller: https://hellbenderpress.org/news/hellbenders-falling-off-highland-rim-of-tennessee.

The Hellbender restoration project at the Chattanooga Zoo: https://hellbenderpress.org/item/65-zoo-researchers-raising-hell-benders-in-chattanooga.