Saturday, October 16, 2004

On walkabout: pond appreciation day (This one finally upstreamed.) This is the intermediate (2) pond, with its algae. You can see stuff hanging down from it under the water there in the middle if you look hard. Some of the horsetails grow like corkscrews, like these near some cattails along the first, very tiny, pond. I'm crouched with the camera here at the head of the first pond, where the creek enters through the culvert/diversion. The large pond farther on is pond 2; finally you can just glimpse pond 3 in the distance, a very large pond with very little algae, where the water exits out a pipe into a big dish in the llama pasture, thence to a stream and back to the creek. Upstream from the ponds--the water is slowing down a bit, and in fact my well ran dry yesterday for the first time since our last rainstorm a month ago (I filled the washing machine with creek water today...) but it's so beautiful in that direction. The neighboring place has cottonwoods, related to but not the same as my "black cottonwoods" (balsam poplars) on the farm the other side of these mountains. We discover an abandoned picnic table, but evidently Ted's known about it for some time. 3:28:16 PM    comment []

Still, Citizen Sparrow by Richard Wilbur (1921- ) Still, citizen sparrow, this vulture which you call Unnatural, let him but lumber again to air Over the rotten office, let him bear The carrion ballast up, and at the tall Tip of the sky lie cruising. Then you'll see That no more beautiful bird is in heaven's height, No more placid wings, no watchfuller flight; He shoulders nature there, the frightfully free, The naked-headed one. Pardon him, you Who dart in the orchard aisles, for it is he Devours death, mocks mutability, Has heart to make an end, keeps nature new. Thinking of Noah, childheart, try to forget How for so many bedlam hours his saw Soured the song of birds with its wheezy gnaw, And the slam of his hammer all the day beset The people's ears. Forget that he could bear To see the towns like coral under the keel, And the fields so dismal deep. Try rather to feel How high and weary it was, on the waters where He rocked his only world, and everyone's. Forgive the hero, you who would have died Gladly with all you knew; he rode that tide To Ararat; all men are Noah's sons. 2:44:02 PM    comment []