Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Be a dragonfly


photo by Louisa Edgerton



Be A Dragonfly

shaggy bog moss
we were looking for dragonflies
shaggy bog moss
we were listening to lichen
we were learning
to say goodbye as we
disappear, into the sky
violet dancer
still water
sunshine
two hawks, flying together.

gary lawless

Irish lichen poem

Map Lichen on Slievetooey

Up on this bare summit
where fierce weathers pare
heather and peat down
to its skeletal bone
until the cairns groan
like gods in labor
I check my route and
watch a hare white
in its winter coat sit
back in a gap of light
scanning a stone whose
lichen maps
worlds
unknown to me and
cartography.

Francis Harvey

lichen poem, lew welch

Springtime in the Rockies, lichen

All these years I overlooked them in the
racket of the rest, this
symbiotic splash of plant and fungus feeding
on rock, on sun, a little moisture, air -
tiny acid-factories dissolving
salt from living rocks and
eating them.

Here they are, blooming!
Trail rock, talus and scree, all dusted with it:
rust, ivory, brilliant yellow-green, and
cliffs like murals!
Huge panels streaked and patched, quietly
with shooting-stars and lupine at the base.

Closer, with a glass, a city of cups!
Clumps of mushrooms and where do the
plants begin? Why are they doing this?
In this big sky and all around me peaks &
the melting glaciers, why am I made to
kneel and peer at Tiny?

These are the stamps on the final envelope.

How can the poisons reach them?
In such thin air, how can they care for the
loss of a million breaths?
What, possibly, could make their ground more bare?

Let it all die.
The hushed globe will wait and wait for
what is now so small and slow to
open it again.

As now, indeed, it opens again, this
scentless velvet,
crumbler-of-the-rocks,

this Lichen!


Lew Welch

Sunday, May 21, 2017

may walk

group photo, may 21 walk - Jim McCarthy
hellebore- Jim McCarthy

We are continuing our naming project - giving new names to favorite places, trees, plants... in the Preserve. Here are some from today: blueberry point, porcupine ledge, phoebe falls, ice eddy falls, scout camp, wood frog way. Do you have personal names for places in the Preserve you would share with us?



violets in the rock seam -
is the light in the water
is the light inside the stone
is the light moving
is that what I hear
is there light inside me
who is listening ?

5/5/17
This Preserve is a blessing
Grounding me more
with each step
Nature speaks to me saying "Everything is as it should be."

Thank you CREA
Namaste
Judy visiting from RI


A live-wire yellow-rumped
and black throated green warblers
in spite of grey + cold, Rose
breasted grosbeak sang for
an hour - Black throated blue too!

Janet Galle 5/12

Monday, May 1, 2017

Easter walk


drawing by Ann Nelson


from the CREA logbook:
Roses are red
violets are blue
We're out in nature.
Where are you?

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

"The sun is hot."

tree like a bow the
weight of the snow
arrows of light
our hearts, in flight


two eagles flying
above the river
flying directly
into your heart



Priscilla Seimer photo



Louisa Edgerton photo

Into the New Year

whose woods these are I think I know
this place is about to bloooow
up into spring we go

Kayle (the vegetable) simpson





photos from the Preserve by Priscilla Seimer