Garden of the Seasons: Marshes, Ponds, and Memories

The Beaver Marsh

(top photo)

The beavers have chewed the landscape into marsh

Cattails along the edge, marsh grass within

The masts of dead trees shrink into primeval ooze

Birds nest in the margins 

hunt in the shallows

This landscape, this point of view we would never have,

all things considered,

except the beaver ran through it. 

 

One Side of the Causeway

(second photo)

The water is high on the 'causeway' spillover

Whose cause is it?

Don't rush, the Phragmites will wait as long as it takes

Red-winged blackbirds flash in the spring

Fishermen in summer, pickup trucks on the verge

Me there some October sunsets, year after year,

Till the wind reminds me how soft I am

                                                     
Remembering Power 
(third photo)

Water running hard along The River Walk in Great Barrington

Rapids surge and counter flow

in the stream where the first new lights of the gods of power

illuminated the town 

and Stanley's A/C defeated Edison's D/C

Untapped now the current runs hard

                                                        after the autumn rains

Day's End
(fourth pic down)
Way too soon
The season guilds, then bares its heart of wood
In the afternoon light 
I forage for kindling among the 
broken limbs left behind 
by the woodcutter
after the storm of another season took down the king 
of this mini-forest
More light for everyone else

Two Views of Pierce Pond
(fifth and sixth photos down)
In the midst of things a time of reflections 
A golden morning in nature preserve where the birds 
have largely slipped away,
having weighed the consequences of staring into winter's face
more seriously than those of us 
who slip indoors and burn what the ax-man left behind.
The water remains
the silvery slivers, the golden stalks, the evergreens
all bend to face the blue waters
and gaze upon the shape of things

 
 

Under Mountain Road
(last photo) Along the road that runs beneath the mountain
dividing the lowlands from the hills
all of it a glorious tear in nature's master work of splash and splendor,
the local saints of the wood and stream have cut a path 
not through, but just above the wetlands, a boardwalk lifting us closer to the trees
Nearer to the light 
Up above the kiss of blue  
that spreads beneath our dry, though chilly feet 
As we gaze upon the wetland bog
that mingles with the grasses and grows
both bird and fish

They tell me eagles nest there.