Poems from the Avocet

These four poems appeared in the most recent issue of The Weekly Avocet, a weekly publication from The Avocet.

Mockingbird has no song of his own.
He mimics every bird that flies by.
Like some people I know, the mockingbird
remembers and repeats idle gossip. 

Ray Zimmerman, Chattanooga, Tennessee, znaturalist (at) yahoo.com

21st Century Inferno

The umbrellas of the Riviera are not enough protection 
as travelers flee the fires of Greek islands and interior forests. 
I ponder the wisdom of longleaf pine and wiregrass. 
Like ponderosa pines, they have learned to live with fire. 

I dreamed I saw the longleaf dancing in the fire as they  
often do. I  wonder if the gopher tortoises could 
dig deep enough to escape the heat and welcome 
indigo snakes, who make homes in their borrows.

Hoping for respite, I seek the icy waters of the River Styx 
but find she has flowed too close to Phlegethon. 
Steam rises from her shores as mining companies reconsider 
Greenland because the ice sheet is retreating. 

Chicxulub Inferno
or Champy's Story

Many of us died in the superheated steam
that rose from the crater as others turned to ash. 
The heat melted rock that flew into the sky 
and fell to earth. 

Some of it escaped the atmosphere, but that is not 
my story of flight from fire and seeking cooler waters. 
Men tell stories of a distant relative in Scotland.
Perhaps a close cousin. 

The escape was narrow. Only a few of us are here in 
Lake Champlain to carry on the line, perhaps others
across the pond. Survival requires a herd or, if you will, 
a school, and I am not alone. 
 
Primal

Pitcher plants and sundew dine on bugs as
gulls arrive from the Great Lakes to startle me. 
Their cries awaken my joy in all flying things.

Fish shatter my reflection in the pond’s mirror.
Herons stalk them on the sun-bleached shoreline. 
I feel a kinship with herons and kingfishers. 

I stir with primal hunting urge. 
Rewilding, perhaps feral, I cast my line. 
With skill, I may eat well. 

Primal was previously published on the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild website.
Ray Zimmerman, Chattanooga, Tennessee, znaturalist@yahoo.com