Earth Day

     It was a beautiful Earth Day, with warm, comforting weather and a cloudless sky that smiled blue all day. When I took a walk up the mountain, the birds were throwing their songs into that sky. In the afternoon, a wind wandered down from the top of the ridge and played with the trees for a while. If ever there was a day for celebrating the Earth, this was that kind of day. 

    This has been that kind of spring, too, with balmy days and an unusual number of animals blessing me with their presence. First, a northern pygmy owl flew into my apple tree. easily identified by the spots that look like eyes in the back of his head and because he was a daytime owl. I wanted to see him dive for a mouse, but he outlasted me, and I finally turned back to my work, glowing from the treat he had given me.

    Next there was a fox, which my son, visiting from his home in Washington, saw first. At his cry—"Fox!"—we ran to the window to admire the russet and silver coloring, the silky tail, the lithe, graceful movements. We watched that fox leap after the mouse the owl never found. 

    The next morning it was again my son who spotted the pileated woodpecker I had heard when I woke up, so big and beautiful, with his red head pounding like a jackhammer and then flashing through the woods. At that point we saw the second pileated, no doubt his mate.

    One evening after my son had left for his home in Washington, I heard the fox bark just outside the back door. When I opened the door, he twirled his tail and darted away. I think he had just stopped by to say hello.

    Then there was the hawk that flew to the top of a tall fir where I had stopped on my walk to listen to the birds. And the large bird that swooped from my house through the woods over my pond, maybe an owl, but probably a great blue heron.

    And, climactically, coyotes, calling from somewhere far up Humpy Mountain, lifting their noses in the air, stretching their throats and pouring out their songs. They were a rare treat.

    Today I was supposed to do a Facebook Live recitation of nature poems in honor of Earth Day, but something went wrong, and the recitation didn't go live, so I'll have to reschedule for another day, which, alas, won't be Earth Day. But nature poems are good to read any time. As one friend said, "Every day is Earth Day," as this spring has made abundantly clear.

"These Days of Spring"

For those of you unable to get to Table Rock Mountain to see the wildflowers, here is my poem that the Nature Conservancy posted on the trail. (See last week's post for a description of the trail.) 

These Days of Spring

These days the sun exhales with warmth and pours

Over the peak ablaze with smiles. It paces

In leisure through a lapis sky where soars

The big-winged hawk the glorious blue embraces.

These days, at forest's edge, the shooting stars

Flamingo-pink—and buttercups rich gold,

Camas blue as robin's-egg skies—set bars

Of color into which winter's wastes fold.

These days the fuchsia rows of redbud trees,

White clouds of flowering pears, and candy-pink

Crabapple waves present to eager breeze

Their petals, delicate flakes for air to drink.

Gathering all that glory on the wing

A bid's song colors air. These days of spring.

Poetry on Table Rock

     If July is the best time for wildflowers in the Siskiyou Mountains, spring—now—is the best time for flowers on the Table Rock Mountains, flat-topped, low-elevation, geologically interesting formations outside of Medford, Oregon. Both Upper and Lower Table Rock are famous for their masses and varieties of wildflowers. Usually the Bureau of Land Management and the Nature Conservancy, who co-manage the area, lead wildflower hikes at this time of year. This year because the pandemic has prevented those walks, the Nature Conservancy has encouraged individuals to hike there by posting poems by local poets along the trails.

    One of my poems, "These Days of Spring," is on the Upper Table Rock trail. I wanted to see how it looked and also to read the other poems and to witness the flowers, so a few days ago I left the house at 6:00am and was on the trail by 7:15.

   The trail led gently uphill through woods of oaks, firs, and madrones, on the floor of which were carpets of fawn lilies, with occasional accents of scarlet-red fritillaria and blue hound's tongue, then stripes of yellow buttercups. The birds were singing from tree-tops. Such a chorus for an early-morning hike!

Fawn lilies

   I also saw desert parsley, fiddleheads, blue-eyed Mary, ookow, buttercups, popcorn flower, larkspur, and mountain lupine. If I hadn't stopped off the trail, carefully avoiding the poison oak, to give plenty of space for a couple of hikers to pass, I would have missed the rush lily in the woods.

The trail is wide enough 
for the hiker to avoid poison oak.

    When I paused to read my poem on its placard by the trail and read its last two lines—"Gathering all the glory on the wing/A bird's song colors air. These days of spring"—I lifted my head and heard the birds, the perfect combination of poetry and experience. Reading about the turkey vulture in Dan Kaufman's poem at an overlook, I kept expecting to see a vulture soaring in the distance. And Pepper Trail's five haiku were written on Table Rock, so they evoked exactly where I was.

    From the wide, flat expanse of the top of Upper Table Rock, snow-peaked Siskiyou Mountains rickracked the distant horizon. Desert parsley yellowed the ground. 

Desert parsley and snowy Siskiyous

In the distance I could see a white tower of some sort and imagined it as a religious or ritual tribute to Table Rock. I was curious enough to decide to walk to it.

    To save you the hour's walk, in case you hike there and have the same curiosity, I will tell you that it is an ugly government tower with huge Keep Off signs. I could have saved myself the extra hour's walk by simply looking for information on Wikipedia later, which told me, after I got home, that it is a 25-foot tall very high frequency omnidirectional range aviation tower. In other words, a practical thing for navigation, but far from the lovely steeple I had imagined.

ORA tower

    Other than the tower, the hike was nothing but beauty—the flowers, the views, the woods, and the poems. If you live in or near the Rogue Valley, go to the Table Rock trails this April both to see the wildflowers and to read the poems. You're in for a treat.

Another view from the top

April Fool's Day

     April 1 is April Fool's Day. It's also the first day of National Poetry Month. Therefore, I post the following poem, which talks not about fools but about:

Foolish Money

                        

 

Foolish money is not the money you spent unwisely

on that pair of shoes that don’t match anything.

It’s not the ten-dollar bill you so foolishly dropped 

in the garbage bin when you threw away the receipt 

in your hand as you left the store. 

It’s not the quarter you bent over to pick up in the gutter,

hoping no one was watching.

It’s not the money you spent for a trip to Paris with your boyfriend,

who left you there to make your broken-hearted

way home, determined never to be such a fool again.

Foolish money is not the ten thousand dollars 

that built a pond that never filled.

And it certainly is not the money that bought 

the degree in English you “never used.”

Foolish money is the money 

my mother gave each of her children

after her annual Open House,

at which she sold the bins and tins and metal trays,

children’s chairs, china cups and saucers,

wooden boxes, Japanese screens

she had been painting for months.

“This is foolish money,” she would say.

“Don’t spend it on anything important,”

by which I learned 

that generosity is never foolish.