Month: September 2008

Strangely Beautiful

I can still remember (only because it’s not too long ago) thinking the first time I took a picture of an American Coot that it sure was one ugly duck.

Turns out I was wrong on a number of counts. First, it isn’t a duck at all. It belongs to the Rail family. Of course, I didn’t know then there was a “rail” family way back then. In fact, a little web browsing revealed just how ignorant I am of that family I still am.

More importantly, the more I’ve observed Coots the more beautiful they seem . Perhaps I started switching to that view when I watched them lovingly caring for their chicks last summer.

The more I photograph and learn about them, the more I’m convinced they have a strange beauty about them. It wasn’t until I took this photograph last week that I’d noticed their remarkably strange, even beautiful, feet.

American Coot Walking on Beach

Seven Years Old

I’m always a little amazed when “In a Dark Time’s” anniversary rolls around. It’s hard to believe I’ve been blogging for seven years, created 1,701 entries, and received 5, 371 comments. (Only God knows how much spam I’ve received, but I do know that Askimet has caught 96,485 entries since I installed it a little over a year ago.) I’ve long since managed to lose track of how many visitors I’ve had, but it’s well over a million, and I’ve gone from averaging ten or less visits a day when I began to over 1,000 per day in the last year.

I started out with Blogger, switched to Movable Type and, recently, to WordPress. You don’t have to look too hard to see how the blog has changed in time. Of course, some entries have suffered from being translated from one program to another, and, apparently, from being written on a Mac and then translated on a Windows machine.

Early entries were almost all politically related, mostly my opposition to our invasion of Afghanistan and later, more stridently, to our invasion of Iraq. At different times it’s been referred to as a “War Blog,” a “Poetry Blog,” and more recently a “Photo Blog.”

I think of it as a personal diary I’m sharing with the world. If I want to know when something happened in my life, which happens more and more lately, I simply go back through my blog and it’s all there, including two operations for throat and prostate cancer. And an awful lot of good times.

Considering the longest I’ve ever managed to keep a personal diary was six months, I’m amazed this blog has lasted seven years. There’s been more than a few times when I’ve thought it was time to close it down, especially when friends dropped out. The only reason I haven’t is because of its amorphous content. My blog reflects what I like to do, whether that’s venting my political views, sharing my love of poetry, or sharing my love of Nature.

It’s not heavy, it’s my Life.

Hope you enjoy sharing it with me.

Mary Oliver’s “Messenger”

“Messenger” is the first poem in Mary Oliver’s Thirst
and I loved it on first reading. Still I was hoping that I would find another poem that I loved more. Heck, I would have preferred that the volume end with the best poem rather than begin with it.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find another poem that better expressed my feelings about this stage in my life:

MESSENGER
 
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
 
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
 
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
 
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

 

In fact, my mind immediately went back to this poem when I saw these Wood Ducks at Waughop Lake this week:

Male Wood Duck

Female Wood Duck

If I were starting this blog over today, I could easily use the first line of this poem as my title rather than the line from Roethke’s poem. I might have to substitute the word Rhododendron or Dahlia rather than sunflowers, but I don’t have to tell you that if you’re a regular here.

I’ll admit my ego likes to think I’m at least “half-perfect,” but I’m no longer young, and even I’ve noted that beggars on the street often seem better dressed than I am.

If my photographs have any merit, it is because I am learning to “stand still and learning to be astonished.”

However, a more important reason I’ve hesitated to single out this poem from this 69 page collection is that it’s not exactly representative of a collection that also includes a number of poems that express her sense of loss of her life-long partner.

Mom!

While visiting Waughop lake yesterday, I noticed this brightly colored chick not far from shore

Pied-Billed Chick

though I didn’t recognize it as a Pied-Billed Grebe until I saw it next to the adult that suddenly emerged. The chick seemed to be begging from the adult.

Pied-Billed Chick With Adult

Perhaps it wanted to climb on its back, since that’s what young Grebes do when frightened.

Whatever it’s intention, it was pretty clear that the adult didn’t have the same intentions.

Pied-Billed Chick and Adult

At first it simply swam past the chick, pointedly ignoring it.

When that didn’t seem to work, it started splashing ferociously as if to say, “Get Away,”

Grebe Splashing

which didn’t seemed to deter the chick in the least.

In the end the adult rose out of the water and towered over the chick,

Pied-Billed Grebe Flapping Wings

as if to say, “Enough!”

I wish I understood Grebe, or at least knew more about their behavior and whether this is a normal part of teaching a chick to function on its own. There was another chick slightly larger than this one swimming unconcernedly by itself a mere ten yards or so away from this whole scene.

Witnessing the scene, though, it occurred to me that this poor little guy was going to need some serious therapy when it grew up.

Maybe this wasn’t a parent, though, and he’d learned not to rely on the kindness of strangers.