yes, I have an underbite...

Eye of newt

"Eye of newt,
and toe of frog,
Wool of bat,
and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork,
and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing,
--For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."

Shakespeare's Macbeth (IV, i, 14-15)

Apparently the previous administration classified evidence of global warming and the shrinking sea ice near Alaska. Read it for yourself here

road-runner

In the metaphors we make of the creatures of the heavens and the deep, we often project our imagery, imbuing them with our own reflection. But the world is more than a coloring book of shapes for us to fill in. When we perceive metaphor in reality we enhance our understanding of ourselves, but when we install meanings instead of seeing reality, we miss all the true texture and inherent value, like a child doodling over a great painting.... We miss the expansive opportunity of knowing other creatures. When we see that, worlds open-and even the metaphors that find us become more interesting.

From Eye of the Albatross by Carl Safina

moon eye

Night of four moons
and a single tree
with a single shadow
and a single bird.

On my flesh I seek the
imprint of your lips.
The jet spray kisses the wind
without even touching it.

I bear the "No" you handed me
in the palm of my hand
like a wax lemon
nearly white

Night of four moons
and a single tree.
On the point of a needle
stands my love-whirling round!

-Dead at Daybreak by Federico Garcia Lorca

Whaaaat ???

Be, And, at the same time, know what it is not to be.
That emptiness inside you allows you to vibrate
in resonance with your world. Use it for once.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XIII

lightness

There's a lightness in things. Only we people move forever burdened,
pressing ourselves onto everything, obsessed by weight.
How strange and devouring our ways must seem
to those for whom life is enough.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XIV

bird of paradise

The answer came to me. Wait as long as you need to. The waiting is as important as the doing; it's the time you spend training and the rest in between; it's painting the subject and the space in between; it's the reading and the thinking about what you've read; it's the written words, what is said, what is left unsaid, the space between the thoughts on the page, that makes the story, and it's the space between the notes, the intervals between fast and slow, that makes the music. It's the love of being together, the spacing, the tension of being apart, that brings you back together. Just wait, just to be patient, he will return.

-From the book Grayson by Lynne Cox

I miss him...
my owl man
my muse
I miss him
I love him in black
and I miss seeing him
saunter in smile in his eyes
an exclaimation of "well" on his lips
a man of all birds really
birds and flowers
painter
I miss him....

My god lives in the woods
the light in a bird's eye
my breath as I suck it in
swimming in the ice cold water
looking up to a clouded sky.
The pounding rhythm of my heart
as I run up a hill searching
for that bird that just flew over me.
Death is stillness
the end of movement
as the body chokingly ceases to be
no air, no blood
bones turn to soil
to trees ripping upward
challenging the sun.
I find it under my feet
walking on your back, your blood
filling me to my fingertips
all the marks in the world
cannot capture so ethereal a thing
as what you once were
like the bird shadow
that crosses my face
and leaves the page empty
of its song.

-By the Corbyhawk herself

corby eating watermelon

Crows play. Once thought to be reserved for people, play has been increasingly found in animals, especially long-lived social ones like crows.

In the Company of Crows and Ravens by: John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell

Hi, I am back.... and look a princely frog to start things off again...