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Ten Haiku
I thought I would share — or inflict — some of my original poetry. These haiku were written over a period of a little more than three years. It’s interesting for me to re-read them and see the similarity in theme and tone, almost as if they were all written together at a single sitting. ~ S.K. Orr Ten Haiku I. Message from above Martin on telephone wire Communicating. II. Red dog in green grass One will brown, one will whiten Frozen now in spring. III. Purple martin sings Flinging notes of mercury Droplets on the air. IV. Regiment of weeds Fence marches across meadow The battle is lost.…
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June Into July
There he is again, above me, half-watching me as I am half-watching him. As I write this, the hummingbird is on the telephone wire over my head, his tiny feet curled around the wire, his baton of a bill moving left and right, conducting the orchestra only he and his kin can hear. The summer day is hot and still, and much quieter than the summer Sundays of my youth, the sultry days down in the Delta when the reedy drone of locusts and katydids stretched across the hours and surprised you at night when it began to fade. Quieter here, yes, and perhaps not as hot, but hot still.…
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My Own Private Assisi
My rescue of critters continues. Yesterday, I noticed that one of the hummingbird feeders was empty. When I brought it into the house to wash it out and replenish it with nectar, I saw that a honeybee had somehow worked her way down into the feeder. I dumped her into the sink when I emptied the glass feeder. She was saturated with sugar-water and barely moving, but she did not try to fight me, as the Irishman is reputed to have done when he fell into a vat of whiskey and his mates attempted to rescue him. I took her out to the deck and put her on the rail…