A Birthday Poem

Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.

—Ted Kooser

Back in Business

Prediction was for silence until the twelfth month of 2016. 

Proving to be as accurate as most forecasts, that length stretched out nearly three more months. 

Yet, the rains DO come, even if it seems as if they've been absent ever since one can remember. 

Given that today is a celebratory date for this Poetastic Presence, then a sampling entitled "A Birthday Poem" seems most appropriate. 

Without further expanding on these predictions of precipitation, let's rejoin the streams of poetry.

Paused for Play

On hiatus until early November 2016. Until then, follow along at:

http://gypsynowagon.blogspot.com

The Canyon's Majesty

When you look across
this vast landscape
now, it’s hard to believe

that it could possibly
be damaged or lost
due to acts of man.

But each threat alone
is capable of eroding
a piece of the canyon’s majesty,

and together these threats will strip
the landscape of its ability
to do the thing that makes it unique:

to instill humility
by demonstrating that human beings
are tiny in relation to the forces
that have shaped this planet,

and that we are not the center of the world.

-- Roger Clark, Grand Canyon Trust program director
(arranged quote, from recent article on development in Grand Canyon)

I Think I Could Turn and Live With Animals

I think I could turn
and live with animals,

they are so placid
and self-contained.

They do not sweat and whine
about their condition,

they do not lie awake
in the dark and
weep for their sins,

they do not make me sick
discussing their duty to God,

not one is dissatisfied,
not one is demented with
the mania of owning things,

not one kneels to another
nor to his kind that lived
thousands of years ago,

not one is respectable
or unhappy
over the whole earth.

- Walt Whitman