Photo by Mari H. Hall

Solstice Light

The pond
appears frozen
in the deep shadows
of pines
that stand
like sentinels
against the dark sky.

I play
the sun up
fingers stroke strings
one string at a time
as the sun touches
the tops
of the pines
and then bathes
the snow
in winter's
first light.

Two notes
paint new colors
and then three shine bright
before a full chorus
of crystals
brings forth
the new day
on this one morning
in a multitude
of mornings
each one a note
in the sound
of creation.

It is not
the sun rising
that is miraculous
each day,
but that
I am
Alive
in this sliver
of time
to watch
the first light
in this dance
on the ice.

Field Notes

December 14, 2009.

I wear orange so I won't get shot today. I am startled by two hunters' tracks. I am not used to human trails in my territory. I wonder if the animals can tell the difference between the hunters and me. I wonder about my own impact on the life of these woods. Do the creatures alter their ways because I am here, or am I just part of the life of this place?

I am drawn to a kill. A dead shrew. It's strange that most of the animal is still intact. It looks as though some predator played with it and then discarded it. Most animals would have devoured the whole creature. I examine the tracks. They are canine tracks. They are larger and more splayed than typical coyote tracks. They also wander all over the place. A coyote is generally more efficient in its use of energy. I find a scat. It is full of dog food. A domestic dog has been here. Another stranger in this habitat.

I cross the outlet of a beaver pond. It is running high today. A raccoon has crossed here before me. I follow it to the downed tree trunk where I like to sit and watch the pond. The sun is strong. The snow is melting. I am disoriented by the snow fleas and the chickadee that sings a mating song. It is spring in the woods today.

From where I sit, I see three beaver lodges. Two of them covered with snow in the midst of the frozen pond. The beavers have been busy at the third. There are tracks all over it. Sticks and mud are piled on top of it. I have a good view of it now that the cattails have been beaten down by the snow. The ones that remain are puffed with down and ready to burst.

I leave my perch and make my way through the cattails to the edge of the marsh. The snow is heavy and wet like spring snow. It gives easily beneath my snowshoes. A thicket of black alder with its red berries reminds me that it is December and winter is still ahead. I pass through a stand of laurel and a spider, flying through the air, lands on my pants. I watch it as it puts out feelers and explores this new territory. It climbs onto the spores of a cinnamon fern and I move on into the tall white pines.

There are middens of pine cones everywhere. The red squirrels have been busy preparing for winter. We all have our rituals. The squirrels, the beavers, the raccoons, and the spider. My firewood is stacked and I have chocolate in the cupboards. It is December and winter is still ahead.

Hunting Season

A man was shot
in my woods
yesterday.

He said,
"Some asshole
thought I was
an orange deer."

The stillness
of my morning
is shattered
by this dance
of predator
and prey.

There is a stranger
on my paths
today.
Will he pause
beneath the bear tree?
Will he watch
the otters play?

I see the figures
drawn in caves.
I hear the drums
that call the men
to chase.
The fires burn.
The meat is hung
and winter's cold
is staved.

We eat.
We live.

The bobcat,
fisher, fox,
coyote, otter
mink and man
are partners all
with deer and mouse
squirrel, rabbit,
weasel, hare.

We eat.
We live.

I see his tracks.
He is my buck.
I know his eyes.
I know his bed.

There is a stranger
in our woods
today.

I hold
my breath
and wait.

Field Notes

I watch otters play as a merganser, with her ruddy hood, touches down beside the beaver lodge. The pond is still, but I listen to the high waters of yesterday's rain rushing through the cattails. A marsh wren flits through the thicket busily picking the shrubs for seeds. It is morning in the wetlands. The sun has called us out into this world where one hundred thousand Chinese workers rise from their dormitory beds to assemble ipods for seventy cents an hour while I sit and watch otters play.
In a world where everything is measured by its economic value, an ipod sells for three hundred dollars. The uplands around this marsh have been logged. Their value is in board feet. At one time sheep grazed here. Seventy percent of New England was fields until the market fell out of merino wool and the pastures became forests again. Tomorrow these woods may become renewable energy for biomass plants that consume fifteen hundred tons of wood a day. Economy determines landscape.
An otter, snaking in and out of the dark waters, herds a lumbering beaver towards its lodge. The beavers have thrived here after they were trapped to near extinction. Their pelts were once the preferred currency of the colonies until the market fell out of beaver hats. Today they are aquatic rodents that must be relocated because they threaten the preveailing economic activity. Their meat is prized only by fishers and coyotes. The price for their pelts is too low to offsett the difficulties of trapping.
Hunters come to these woods with their shotguns for ducks, turkeys, bears, moose and deer. These animals are managed. They have economic value. And now, the cattails have disappeared into dollar signs and the rushing brook has become an advertising jingle. Nobody knows how many otters live in this pond. Nobody knows the size of their range. They're here with their rolls and their slides. They eat the fish that no one desires. They play in this world where an ipod is more valuable than forest or a wetland.
The otters play as a woodpecker tap tap taps high in a pine and a flock of geese honks overhead on their way to warm lands. They play.

Google Earth

I have lost
track
of the moon
waxing and waning
in me.

The sun
rises and sets
in the glare
of the computer
screen.

I cannot google
the pull
of the tides
or the circle
of the earth
from spring
to fall
and back
again.

I cannot walk
barefoot
on the embers
of a fire
with all
that is lost
to me
in the pixels
of this monitor.

I no longer
lie in an open
meadow
as a star
carrying
the dust
of other
planets
bursts
open
the night.

I google earth
and die.

Morning Light

I strike
a match.

Fire
catches me
stumbling
from the darkness
of warm slumber.

It is elemental.
It is basic.
It is magic.

My eyes stare
into ancient
memories.

Red twists orange
yellow licks
away the night
meat sizzles
water boils
sugar explodes
witches burn
on embers
from my hand.

I am caught
I am caught
I am caught
in every cell
of every body
burning.

All in one
morning.
All with one
match.

It is elemental.
It is basic.
It is magic
that bursts
from the remnant
of the sun
in a volcano
of molten lava
rising from the
magma of the earth
this fire
shapes
the ground
I walk.

All in one
morning.
All with one
match.

Soundtrack

One two three
four five six
a hammer cuts
through
the early morning
in one two three
four five six
rests
one two three
four five six
the nail
is driven

"What is he building?"
I wonder
as I split
through the ferns
turning golden
and search
for a trail
to follow.

One two three
four five six
noise takes
my thoughts
One two three
four five six
in the quiet
morning
the geese honk.

I stand
in a thicket
of red alder
click click click
one bird rustles the leaves
click click click
chip chip chip
two birds
then three
white-throated sparrows
stop
to feed
in this swamp
click click click
chip chip chip
tic tic tic.

And then the commerce begins.
Cars and trucks on the roads
people going to work
swish swish whoosh whoosh
sputter clank bang
gears change on the hill
morning has broken
the soundtrack
wails.

There is no place
in the continental
United States
that is more
than twenty-one miles
from a road.
swish swish whoosh whoosh
sputter clank bang.

Sound travels
to a pile of feathers
where a creature
has feasted
A wood chipper
a leaf blower
a lawn mower
a siren
that won't quit
whirr whirr whirr
grr grr grr
whirr whirr whirr
"How loud is this noise,"
I wonder
"on the ears
of the forest?"

Whirr whirr whirr
the leaf blower rings
drone drone drone
a plane flies
low over the waters
filled with fall colors
whirr whirr whirr
drone drone drone
a chainsaw chimes in
ayi ayi ayi
in triplets agian
the engine grinds
on the drums
of my ears
three wood ducks
pick their way
through the light
the symphony rages
whirr whirr whirr
a duck quacks
the airplane drone dies
whirr whirr whirr
keeps keeping on.

Otter scat
blocks a deer path
the chainsaw stops
whirr whirr whirr
the leaf blower
groans on.

How loud
is this noise
on the ears
of these woods?

A beaver's hearing
is seven times
more sensitve
than mine.

A coyote
locates
its pack
by sound.

Birds mark
their territory
with song.

whirr whirr whirr
the leaf blower
drones on
the lawn mower
the wood chipper
the chainsaw
beep beep beep
a big truck backs up
beep beep beep
rouses me in my dreams
whirr whirr whirr
the triplets go on
drone groan
whirr
one two three
four five six
beep beep beep.

Indian Pipe
photo by Mari H. Hall

A Tale of Two Orchids

Epipactus Helleborine
Platanthera Psycodes

Orchids both
descended from a grain
of pollen
borne on the wing
of a stingless bee
captured in the resin
of a tree
twenty million years ago.

Twenty million years ago
and they were old then
trampled long before
by dinosaurs.
the family orchids
burst upon a landscape
human eyes have never known.

Epipactus helleborine
Platanthera psycodes
orchids both
blossoming
like testes
on this summer day
in these my woods
where I stand
in a sea of ferns
my senses charmed
by a single tongue
of purple
dripping dewdrops
one by one
like crystals
on the prism
of my lens.

Platanthera psycodes,
the psychotic
psychedelic
of a plant
ignites
these green ferns.
This Small Purple Fringed Orchid
in my magnifying glass of colors
could melt away
the pain of childbirth
and soothe the tired calves
of a people
who walked these hills
before the white man came.

Platanthera psycodes
Epipactus helleborine
members both
of the family orchids
thousands strong
on every continent
surviving only
through the grace
of mushrooms
and sweet solitude.

Helleborine
roadside orchid
of the tiny blossoms
green and brown
and maybe yellow
to some eyes.

Helleborine
carried to these my woods
by a European
just a century ago
looking now
for that singular alliance
berween fungi,
seed, and light.

Helleborine
just another family orchid
in the streets of downtown Boston
and Karachi, Pakistan.
High in the Himalaya.
Russia, Bhutan, Cyprus,
Turkey, Lebanon,
it knows no bounds
but the grace of mushrooms
and sweet solitude.

Epipactus helleborine
Platanthera psycodes
(now I know their Latin names)
Orchids both
they bloom today.

In the presence
of these plants
plagues have come and gone
wars been lost and won,
mountains moved and children born,
men have sailed the seas
in search of gold and God,
walked on the moon
and launched rockets off to Mars,
we have settled lands
and started farms
in the presence of these plants
we baptize our young
we pray for ourselves
we bury our dead,
in the presence of these plants
we laugh, we sing, we dance
in the presence of these plants
the family orchids
love seeks
a singular alliance
between flesh and soul and life.

And here,
in these my woods today,
two orchids bloom.

Field Notes

07.20.09
I am sitting on the logged stump of a once great white pine, in the midst of laurel, royal ferns, marsh ferns, and beech tree stump sprouts. The beavers have created an opening in the canopy here. I turn my face to the sun. A cherry tree that they felled is hung up against a red maple. This place has become a crossroads in the thicket of swamp that surrounds me. I can hear the blue herons cackling on the marsh, the yellowthroat is defending his territory, a bull frog twangs. The air sticks to my skin. There is moisture everywhere and yet there are no mosquitoes. It is strange. They are such a part of this landscape, I wonder why they are missing. There are very few bats this year. White nose syndrome has decimated their population. They eat mosquitoes. There are also fewer swallows. They, too, eat mosquitoes. It has rained constantly. The mosquitoes should be unbearable. Yet there are very few. What does that mean for the habitat as a whole? Is that why there are fewer swallows? What role do mosquitoes play in the ecology of this wetland? They are a nuisance. A danger even, with encepalitis, malaria, and West Nile virus, but they are more a part of this place than I am. Where are they?

There is coyote scat beside me on the stump. There is gold thread at my feet. There is such green abundance all about me, that it overwhelms me. I am at a loss for words in the thick of this northern rain forest. The longer I sit, the more I see, the more I hear, the more I become a part of these woods. This is my neighborhood. My Broadway and 92nd street. My Southie. My barrio. How many people on this planet are sitting in green this morning?

A beech leaf drifts gently to the floor. Why did it fall? There is a reason for everything here. A laurel leaf beside me has been chewed. There is a bird dropping beside it. I followed a bear's trail to this place. This clearing is alive with stories. A logger, the beavers, a moose, birds, bears, deer, and insects unknown and too numerous to count. I could spend a lifetime in this universe and still not know it.
A bumble bee buzzes by.

This is my laboratory. This is my study. This is my office. My camo is my business suit. A noise beside me startles me and my heart jumps. My skin crawls. A rush of adrenaline surges through me. What will I do if it is a bear? I know they are safe, but they are big and they are wild. Walk backwards slowly all the books say. Whatever you do, don't run. But I can't get the fact out of my brain that black bears like to play ball with human heads. A breeze rustles the cattails and then the beech leaves. A mosquito scouts my hand for a place to drill. I pack my pen and slip back into the green.

Field Notes

07.11.09
Cattails rustle in the breeze, the only movement on the marsh this morning. Sounds of an angry duck. A couple of bullfrogs. A pair of yellow-throated warblers guarding their nest in the shrub willows. I sit on the bank and smell the warmth coming off the water. A rich earthy scent of moisture and decay. I know that nothing will reveal itself until I become a part of the landscape. I must be still and wait, inspite of the mosquitoes. That is what it is to be a naturalist. There are two basic ingredients. One, intense curiosity, and two, the ability to sit quietly and observe.

I have my perches in these woods. I have followed a beaver trail to this open spot above the marsh. A chorus of bullfrogs draws my attention. I have not heard as many in one spot in a long time.

The cattails have both male and female parts now. It is time to collect pollen for pancakes. The wind picks up and blows the mosquitoes away. Small clouds of yellow pollen rise like smoke from the cattail spike. Pollination occurs before my eyes as the breeze dies and the pollen settles on the lower female part of the spike. I think about moving on to my next station, where I can get a better look at the entire marsh, but I am reluctant to alert the neighborhood to my presence again as everything has settled back into its routine.

It is so beautiful here. That, too, is part of the experience. We were put here on this earth to witness beauty, and I must acknowledge my own rapture. A goldfinch squeaks above me.

I move on and get caught up in a heron feeding ritual before I can even get to my next stop. Their cackling calls me and I watch the three juveniles follow an adult to the edge of a beaver lodge. There is a huge commotion. Beaks clack as they vie for food from the adult's mouth. My arms grow tired holding the binoculars as the clacking and cackling continues. The adult regurgitates on a pile of mud and sticks and there is a feeding frenzy as the gangly young ones go for it. The adult raises its head above the fray and the youngsters are up once again reaching for its beak. They are very demanding in their pursuit of food. I imagine the adult must feel a bit like a mother who is ready for her kids to leave home and fend for themselves. The adult finally departs and the three juveniles stay behind on the lodge. I relax my watch until I hear the cackling once again and another adult comes swooping in. The feeding is not over yet. Once again the clacking of beaks ensues. The regurgitation. The feeding frenzy. But this adult does not have the patience of the first one and escapes the quickly escapes the clutch of the chicks. Once sated, the young ones quietly disperse. The first flies up over the waters and the nest, defecates in the air, and then alights on a log not far from the beaver lodge. An adult comes to sit with it, but doesn't stay long. The two other juveniles hang together on the lodge, one at each end. Stillness returns to the marsh. Two wood ducks parade past. Two turtles sun on a rock, too far away for my binoculars to identify them.

The clouds move in. I must get home to get my laundry off the line. I take one last sweep with my binoculars and move on my way. I am not a part of this world. I know.

Bear Bones

Bear bones and Bach
turn Sunday
into ordered fragments
of sound anatomy.

"I hate Nature."
I tell my wife
when the cat
deposits a bird
on the kitchen floor.

I Hate Nature.

I sit
my back against
a hemlock
scarred by claws.

I trace
the tiny teeth marks
on the body
of a bear's bone.

A genius
strikes a note
on a grand piano
with its legs cut short.

One note.

We are both
predator and prey
all life must eat
like the cat
at my feet
and the bear
whose bones
I hold
like the genius
and me.

Life thrives on death.

I am cursed
because I know that.

The pianist
strikes another note.

I watch
a merganser
and her hooded chicks
run on water.
Most of them will die
before they fly.

I Hate Nature.

I hate him
because he takes
the order from my life.

Predator and prey
do not exist.
Strong and weak
we all die
just the same.

Yet sound
lives on forever
one note
one note
one note
echoing
through
time.

GUTs

The Grand Unification Theory:
at extremely high energy
everything becomes One.

I stare
at a rock wall
ten thousand feet
of red layers
fill all space
before me.

Particles
spin and polarize
everything becomes real
when differences are measured.

The smell of death
rises from a corpse
in the first heat
of spring.

Each point in space
is a simple harmonic oscillator
even a vacuum
has a vastly complex structure.

A massive star
explodes
in a burst of energy
ten seconds long
that travels
thirteen billion
light years
through 95 percent
of all existence
of all time and space
through all forms
of matter
energy
and momentum
to meet us
four hundred years
after Galileo
first gazed
through the lens
of a telescope.

This star
born of an infant universe
was thirty times
the size of our sun
one million years old
it died
600 million years
after energy
coalesced in one
Big Bang.

This universe
this home
feeds on dark energy
that expands
while the rock
before me rises
inch by inch
second by second
into something
greater than itself.

When one of a pair
of particles
is pulled into a
Black Hole
everything becomes real.

Zero point energy
and spontaneous symmetry.

At extremely high energy
everything becomes one.

My wife is turning
sixty.

The Edge

Before Life
supercontinents
floated
on a crust
of molten lava.

I skirt
a marsh
opening
to spring.

Two otters
snake
the dark waters
in the morning sun.

A merganser
fluffs
his great white hood
wags his wings
and walks on water
while a female,
unimpressed,
continues pulling
at the cattails.

There is no
common language
not even between lovers.

Geese honking
open up the sky
to imbedded thunderstorms
that change the winds
while ice melts
like glaciers
calving into
chocolate waters
to be surfed
by madmen
with a brushfire
of words
unleashed by
continents colliding
450 million years ago
in the crosscuts of I-90
they leave their marks.

We all want to be known
as we leave ourselves
in stone
in bones
in ashes
turned to Earth
a barred owl calls.

A Conversation with Thoreau

We sit edge of the pond and watch the ice melt on St. Patrick's Day.
"One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in," Thoreau wrote beside Walden Pond in 1846.
We gaze out over the last of the winter woods as the snow begins to pull away from the base of the trees. Two chickadees claim their territories and a third joins in. A perfect harmony.
The pond is an island of ice as the shallows melt first. "In 1845, Walden Pond was first completely open on the first of April; in 1846, the twenty-fifth of March; in 1847, the eighth of April..." Thoreau calculated the melting by the depth of the ice, the strength of the sunlight, and the profundity of the pond. All ponds melt in their own way. Ours holds the cold. It is set in a dip, surrounded by pines and deep snows. It once served as an ice pond for the town and it is often not open until the end of April.
I take a deep breath. The breeze is from the south today and it no longer chills like the winter wind.
"Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes," Thoreau notes.
I wonder about global warming.
"It's going to be a hot summer," says my wife.
"Hot and dry, or hot and humid?" I ask.
"Just hot," she says. "That's what the winds say, hot."
We hear heavy wings beating above us and look into the vastness of the spring sky.
"How many people have heard bird's wings beat in flight?" I wonder.
"You should take a survey," she says.
I laugh.
"Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness-to sometimes wade in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature."
A hawk soars overhead.
My cellphone rings.
The snow melts.
We can never have enough of Nature.

This Bach's for You

In the lead of March
in fog and snow
and wet that saturates
the soul
I call for alms
a fugue, a prelude
sarabande
partita
passacaille
sixteenth note melodies
of points and counterpoints
a cantata
and a well-tempered clavier
this Bach's for you
to break the gray
and fill the heart again
with dreams
and hope.

Bach, Bach, Bach, Bach
like so many chickens clucking
Bach cluck Bach cluck Bach cluck
point and counterpoint
feathers pour forth
from my throat
as lyrics stick
I strike a chord
and then another
two three
cluck up Bach Bach
with fingers possessed
by ancient memory
I run a triplet
up and down
through Jesu, Joy of Man's Desire
to Goldberg playing out his variations.
This Bach's for you.

St. Matthew's Passion
and St. John's
both rise to move
a steel day
of doom and gloom
to a Bach Bach cluck cluck
clavier of light
the Magnificat
shines through.

This Bach's for you!

Smoke Signals

Ravens gather
to read
smoke signals
that rise
like diatonic triads
of metamorphosed
cellulose
into a steel
gray sky.

The product
of some
disturbance regime
like ice,
or water, wind, fire
or a ten ton skidder
and a chainsaw
with a thirty-six inch bar
that rocks
the northern forest
where the ravens roost.

I ride shotgun
in another world
a disturbance regime
of twelve lane freeways
and a van filled
with darbhukas
and djembes,
bodhrains
tambourines
claves, marracas, and triangles.

The distribution
of what I know
as sensible
careens into a place
no GPS can navigate.

The blackberries
are not edible
where the cormorants gather
on the wire skeletons
of electronic lives
the smoke signals
shift like magnetic north
on an obsolete compass
and the triads
switch to a minor key
as the flames fly
from pine to birch
and citibank demands
a disturbing regimen
of voluntary
mandatory
Saturday workdays
to cut jobs
of thousands
as trillions
of paperless
dollars
flow over a dam
made of swiss cheese
and scatter
in the winds
like so many
smoke signals.

Cancer
is what
my life is
my friend
says to me
as I breathe
in the smoke
and wonder
what the burning
will do
to my throat
my eyes
my lungs
my heart
my tears.

Truro Terns at Sunrise

Photo by Mari H. Hall

The Second Coyote

"I have your coyote,"
the message says.
"Come get it,
it's freaking
everybody out."

She is frozen
on a snowbank
her red gold tail
flutters
in the breeze.

She seems so alive
I stroke her
like She is
my long lost dog.

But She is dead.

Shot by an old timer
who sits and waits for her
to take his bait
before he pulls the trigger.

"Pests,"
he sputters
Damn coyotes eat
his venison.

I do not tell him
that like humans,
coyotes reproduce
when threatened.

In my mystic's hands
I carry this dog's spirit.

I have tracked her
through the hemlocks
ash and beeches
across the swamps
at midnight
I have heard her
sing and laugh
and call.

I have touched
her menstrual blood.

I raise my arms
to the wind
and ask,
"What do I do
with the flesh
and bones
and the beautiful
soft fur coat?"

I google
"preserving skeletons"
and find the algorithms
to create the perfect curve
of a computer skeleton.

But there are no numbers here
in this world of flesh and bone.

"Boil it,"
my brother tells me.
"Soak it in water
until the meat comes off."

"Bury it in sand
and let the maggots
do the dirty work."

Dead eyes stare at me.
The muscles are hard
beneath my kneading hands.

There are no numbers here.

There is antiseptic clean
in the rotting flesh
and blood that stains
my fingers brown.

This song dog
trickster
gray ghost
rises
to explain
that there is
no order
in the chaos
of the spirit
no rhyme
no reason
no numbers.

Only Life
Only Death
in the blood
and guts
of what binds
us to the tendons
and the ligaments
of life.

There is only
our own willingness
to participate
in each other's minds
and to witness
each other's lives.

I take
this Spirit
into me
and She
opens
my Eyes
my Ears
my Heart
to Life.

Photo by Mari H. Hall

Vulpes Vulpes

Canid tracks in the snow. Red Fox. Vulpes vulpes. The most far ranging terrestrial carnivore on the planet. The other trickster canid of lore. The star of Aesop's Fables dances through the snow before my eyes. This one has a mate. I see their trails criss crossing and zig zagging through the woods. I follow them up a knoll to their mating place. I see where one has pounced on a gray squirrel and later where it has feasted, leaving behind a patch of blood in the packed snow, still melting from its body heat. Later, I find feathers and a wing pattern etched beside their trail. These foxes are not hungry. In my mind, I see their eyes with their pupils slit vertically like cats. They are watching me, I know. That is what foxes do. They know these woods far better than I, and they tell me so. The smell of their urine on the rock where all winter I have stopped to pull on my snowshoes says, "I am here. This is my territory!" Solitary, except for this season when they breed and raise young, these two are leading me on a lark. I fall through the ice and am shocked back to the reality of winter cold and survival. They weigh between six and twenty pounds. They are small and slither beneath the laurel that I must push and pull and drag myself through as twigs poke at me and branches seek to hold me back. These are their woods, not mine. I know I must head for home. My pants are wet. My boots filled with icy water, but the foxes lead me on. "Play with me, play with me," the tracks beg as they turn here and come back. burst forward, stop, change direction. This is not the direct registering, energy saving canid, that guidebooks portray. This is the creature of the woods that revels in the magic of scent, in the presence of a vixen, in the promise of a future. For today, for this time in winter when the light is stronger and life is beginning to sow its seeds again, these foxes announce, "We are alive!" And their yips fill the night.

Buffer Zone

I track a red fox
through smiling black faces
posed on the steps
of St. Michael's
a frail white woman
rocks back and forth
hands shaking
voice begging
for spare change
like an animal
startled by winter
I walk on
by a body
wrapped
in newspaper stories
of bombing in Gaza
and Bernard Madoff
paces his Park Avenue
pent house
as I track
the red fox
down onto the three
a Lebanese clerk
on fourteenth street
tells me
that in Beirut
only Hezbollah
wear orange
I say
I wear orange
so I will not
be shot
tracking red fox
in the northern
reaches of Central Park
where a coyote lingers
in wait
and all that is left
of the light
of the day
is the moon.

TEOTWAWKI 12/21/2012

65 million years ago a 6.2 mile diameter asteroid crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula resulting in a 100 million megaton explosion that excavated a 112 mile wide crater that brought the dinosaur world to an end.

December 21, 2012
The End Of The World As We Know It.

55 million years ago, 20 percent of the world's frozen methane reserves melted. Global temperatures rose by 13 degrees. 80 percent of all deep sea creatures became extinct.

December 21, 2012
The End Of The World As We Know It.

75,000 years ago a supervolcano erupted in Toba, Sumatra sending thousands of cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere, blocking out sunlight for 2500 miles. Global temperatures plummeted 21 degrees. The human population decreased to several thousand. Three quarters of all plants in the northern hemisphere died.

December 21, 2012
The End Of The World As We Know It.

The Supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park is 40,000 years overdue for an eruption.

The Cumbre Vieja Volcano in the Canary Islands is unstable and could collapse into the Atlantic Ocean sending 500 billion tons of rock plunging into the sea creating a splash more than 2100 feet high and 25 feet across and a wave racing across the Atlantic at 450 miles per hour.

December 21, 2012
The End Of The World As We Know It.

The dinosaurs disappeared.

The Mayans disappeared.

The Passenger Pigeon, the Dodo Bird, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker
The American Lion, the Puerto Rican Shrew, the Sea Mink, the Snow Leopard.
Every twenty minutes a species disappears.

Ninety-nine percent of all the species that have existed on Earth are now extinct.

December 21, 2012.

TEOTWAWKI

How many worlds have ended?

How many?

How?