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3/28/2021 9 Comments

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.
9 Comments
Susan Kline
3/29/2021 08:17:40 am

Think of the number of people who eagerly named all those mites! And so the world goes on, as millions of people see the point of working, unnoticed, in quiet places.

Reply
Anita Sullivan
3/29/2021 06:01:44 pm

Yes, Susan, I LOVE to hear that 40,000 mites have specific names. This is why we must not go extinct.

Reply
Eric Wayne Dickey link
3/29/2021 09:50:47 am

I bow down to our tardigrade overlords!

Reply
Anita Sullivan
3/29/2021 06:05:52 pm

Sounds like bad political sci fi!

Reply
Amanda Powell
3/29/2021 10:00:18 am

I am so glad to know about Runcina ... being happily relieved of the need or occasion for regular devotions to Asphalta, the goddess (goddx) of parking!

Reply
Gary Lark
3/29/2021 11:03:10 am

I'm still thinking about eye patches...what and how they may perceive. And what our eyes may evolve to see.

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Rick Borsten link
3/29/2021 11:52:51 am

Love that you're doing this, dear Anita. So great to hear your three-dimesional voice emmanating in clear surround-sound off your two dimensional page, whimsical, winsome, and airy. It's a voice that makes me miss our ten or twelve years of monthly gatherings with C and G.

Reply
Anita Sullivan
3/29/2021 06:04:19 pm

Yes, Rick, it's almost enough to make me return to Corvallis. Glad to hear your own "voice" in this rather sterile medium. More flowers. More worms. More named mites! (is what I say)

Reply
Charles Goodrich
3/30/2021 09:50:33 am

Your keen and playful observations are perfectly springly, Anita. Homage to the soil herd.

Reply



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