Poet's Petard #3 – April, 2021

   O Spring! O Spring! O Spring!
   It makes me sing

​(Freddy the Pig)

​This month I want to reinforce the cliché of Spring. It showed up again this year. We can watch from the sidelines, or jump right in.

​In my front-yard garden a couple of Ravens are obviously going through their first year of nest-building. No need to switch on the television, just watch this lordly fowl pulling at a dry twig from a Curly Willow tree – the twig about 4 times his length and built like a bedspring. Nope, it won't disentangle itself from the twisted clot of other twigs, even when Raven turns on the full power of his stocky frame. (Yank! Yank! Wiggle! Wiggle!) Through the binoculars, I swear he looks bewildered. Eventually I watch (her/him) fly off with a much smaller bit sticking out both sides of his beak. Could there be a more efficient way to do this? Tradition be damned.

​Here's lordly Greek poet Odysseus Elytis offering his support:

“I will tonsure my head, monk of things verdant,
And reverently serve the order of birds.

​And in the latest issue of Emergence Magazine Jay Griffiths combines literature with science in a detailed rhapsody on the soil beneath and way-beneath our feet. The kind of essay that makes you feel totally nourished:

“Who else dwells here below? Rotifers, their tails turning like wheels. Protozoa. Amoebae. Nematodes or round-worms, some feeding on fungi and some being food for fungi and bacteria. (It's all a feast down here.) There are forty thousand named species of mite. Here, too, there is the hardy tardigrade, better known by its endearing moniker, the water bear, champion of sheer survival; and also the glorious Collembola, or springtail, that can jump a hundred times its own length. These miniature shapeshifting jesters can alter their size and shape rapidly if they need to. And they have eye patches.

​Don't forget to leave a little offering to Runcina, the Roman goddess of weeding.