just watched two bald eagles
ride a thermal high
and then slide
off the top,
first one
to the south and
the other southeast -
earlier today we saw five
younger eagles ride the same boost
with a red tailed hawk complaining
below and at last giving up and
breaking its neck
for parts unknown .

and now i am walking this
meadow at the top of the hill
back of the trailer.
today i am lucky -
i wore the right kind of mask -
small birds step softly on
the top of my head,
two bumble bees wonder briefly
if there's pollen in my eye.
i hold up my arm
for an eagle to perch
but she declines -

violet green swallows -
a pair,
and earlier as well,
and today the 28th,
and yesterday too,
a rufous hummingbird around the trailer -
i was standing indoors
on the phone with the lady
who makes arrangements
for the payment
of past due amounts
when i saw him out the window,
a brief and sudden flash of red, in the space between
the top of the apple tree
and the edge of the glass.
i'd forgotten
i'd seen him until now,
standing at this old
and previously mentioned
barn -
standing and
considering - reflecting on
a thick and
spreading
pink-blooming shrub across the
grass, near those big rocks -
i'd cut a branch with some of these
flowers for laura, much
further along the trail
from here - and now
here these are - so
close to home -i
dont remember
seeing it before.

and now, a few minutes, is all,
have passed and here i am,
across the grass, and, i mean,
clink, clank, clunk -
but here i walked,
attracted to the fetching
blooms and in
no more than eighty steps,
i bet.
with a hummingbird, just in my glass,
green-flecked
on his brightly rusted back and
around his neck a magenta blaze that
can, as suddenly, seem black -
he drinks from a flower, another, a few
and then flies up to the alder to
perch - stand here and watch -
his thin long tongue now and then
tastes the sky
which comes all the way down
and pours onto the ground and begins to
dry out some of the rain.








The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I
have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of
the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild.

henry david thoreau
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