First Frost

Life comes down to the first frost at three a.m. I feel like the wiring in my brain hangs on the moonshadows dancing among the trees and I brace myself for the ice as the cold creeps in to expand the cracks in my world where the skeletons leap to light in the cross quarters of the sun and the trees open themselves to the stars and we all surrender to the slumber to come.

Residence on Earth

i fly into the deep chill of the gorge on the back of a Darkling Beetle crawling across the pink tiles of my bathroom floor. If only i had the words of Pablo Neruda to describe my Residence on Earth, but the rusty feathers of a Wood Thrush gurgle from the throat of a Cat and i slap a Mosquito that spatters blood all over my forearm.

Who am i to play God?

i dodge Red Efts in the road and curse them at the same time they eat Salamander eggs. What are the odds that the eggs in the Robin's nest above my bed will hatch as one torrential downpour after another washes the Lives out of holes and the river becomes wider and higher?
i chase a Frog to safer ground.

Who am i to play God?

a Hawk screeches above the currents and sinks Her claws into my flesh because there are no words excruciating enough to carry me to the edge of where Life and Death just are and it's amazing what a difference one Flower can make in this Residence on Earth

The Fungus Among Us

"Fuck!"
I say to myself.
"Can I do this?"

I jump off the ledge of the familiar into the sticky sweat of a slimy world that is drip drip dripping with spores. I have gone into the translucent gills of a Destroying Angel to the place where colors become sounds, tastes twitter behind my eyeballs, and visions pop from faeries' mouths. I am in the Kingdom of Fungi. 400 million years old. 1.5 million species strong. 100,000 latin names. Amanita. Agaricus. Boletus. Cantharellula. They sing in musty wines and powerful drugs, and in the largest of known living creatures that spans thirty acres of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and is fifteen hundred years old. These fungal creatures are saprophytic, living off dead and decaying matter; parasitic, killing living hosts; and symbiotic, digesting nutrients for other living organisms.
Rising as if out of nothing and disappearing again into nothing, they charm us with questions. They dare us to taste the exotic and risk intoxication. Aphrodisiacs. Hallucinogens. Epicurean delights. The Fruits of Gods. The Buddha's last meal was mushrooms and as he lay dying he said that in his lifetime he had eaten two exquisite meals. One, the first meal after he had attained Enlightenment, and the second, this last meal served to him by a humble farmer.
The rain pounds the forest canopy. I lie on my belly and feast on brilliant orange Chanterelles.

The Decline of the Wood Thrush

A wood thrush scratches at the sun-dappled leaves of the forest floor. He stops to probe the soil for beetles, spiders, millipedes, and other small invertebrates. I watch the small, rusty colored bird with a heavily spotted chest and think about how the sweet flutelike sound of his song was once so familiar in these woods. Lately, there have been years when I have not heard it, and each spring now, I wait and wonder.

The problems of the wood thrush's decline of 48% in the last forty years points to the complexities of this interconnected planet we all inhabit. The wood thrush
is a migrant. It breeds in the forests of the eastern United States and then it flies thousands of miles south to Central America, where its range is much smaller. It is dependent on large forests that can supply the protein rich diet of insects and invertebrates that inhabit the darker reaches of the forest floor. These small creatures, in turn, are dependent on a calcium rich environment. Unfortunately, acid rain from coal fired plants, auto emissions, and other air borne pollutants leaches the calcium from the soils and there has been a decline in the food sources that the wood thrush relies upon in its northern environment. In addition, acid rain also frees up heavy metals like mercury and further pollutes the soils where it falls.

On the Central American end, where the wood thrush is called Jumping Joe, the threats come from deforestation and heavy chemical fertilizers that are used for farming. The impact of deforestation is much greater in the wintering range because there is less of it, and each acre must support about six times as many wood thrushes as a comparable acre up north.

It's been forty years since Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, and warned that there may be a time when we have no more songbirds. It's been over 150 years since Thoreau wrote, "The thrush alone declares the immortal wealth and vigor that is in the forest."

There are moments in my life that I will never forget. One is the first time I heard a wood thrush. I was camping on the banks of the Housatonic River and I was stunned by the music of the forest that evening.

"We pave paradise and put up a parking lot." There are so many things that we lose without even realizing it.

Thanks to Audubon magazine for its great article on the wood thrush.

For All You Gardeners

This is a piece I picked up in Mongoose Junction on St. John. It's signed by someone named Gingras and it's copyrighted and made available through How To Live. Long Beach Island, NJ.
609- 492-6454. Enjoy.

How To Be A Gardener

Lean toward sunshine
dig down deep
make peace with chaos
Grow Amazing zucchinis and too many tomatoes
raindance
rake leave and jump in
hum along with bees
Ache, Sweat and Yearn
wear crazy hats
and baggy pants
have wise hands
cultivate patience
moonglow
stay rooted
blossom wildly
have shady and mysterious corners
mend fences
wonder
get earthy
make magic
share the harvest
be thankful

Colony Collapse Disorder

The rain forest emerges
from night of thunder
dripping into morning
my colony suffers
collapse disorder.

A young virgin
in a strait jacket
of chemicals
graduates
from the bleachers
of Hackettstown High.

My alarm clock
blinks 1230 AM
as lightning rouses
me to a spiritual pilgrimage
in the pursuit of food
while all the time
the sky is telling me
to get my nails done.

My fingers smell
like burned flesh
as the sun chases
the storm away
and I emerge
a bedraggled fox
wondering
how my world
has changed.

ST. JOHN, USVI

Hillsides burn in the eyes
of the baggage handler at Cruz Bay
as slaves swim to freedom
in the dark channels where a Black man
is running for President
while the ferry from the Westin
fills with the faces of his African ancestors
and heads away from this island
where I am the invasive species
perching on the hard red rocks
thrust from the depths of earths's magma
in the collision of two tectonic plates
fifty million years ago.

Blue tangs, parrot fish, octopus, eagle ray
barracuda, shark and sea turtles
all swim among the many corals
brain, fire, flower, elkhorn, pillar and deadman's fingers
Lizard fish, damselfish, grunts, grouper, trumpet fish, eels
and bar jacks,
I could make a longer list
doctor bird, bananaquit, frigate bird, kite, trembler
whistler, egret, black heron
on and on the names lure me
with their sounds and colors
century plant, sensitive fern, soursop, calabash, lion's tail
flamboyant, allamanda, Izora,
how many songs
in the words my tongue trips on?

This is not my habitat
I tell my wife
I was not made to live
and breathe here
The rocks are too sharp
the air too humid and too hot
my white skin crawls
out of itself
as I seek shelter
from the sun,
darting from the shade
to the water
like an iguana
under the watchful eyes
of the mongoose
goats eat the hillsides
cows stroll the roads
and a sign reads
Donkeys Keep Out.

Whose island is this?
Whose habitat?

Gas costs $4.68 in Coral Bay.