Poem Without Permission

Crash landings and small craft warnings
seeds and grasses in
the cross wind of the plains.
This defiance is perilous:
darting in and out
a ground skirmish
with a young buffalo, the size of a continent,
who seems not to notice
but who avoids stepping on any of us.

Huge and tiny
everywhere,
nowhere.

(copyright 1999 Rick Smith)

I discovered a wren's nest in one of the blackberry bushes last week. I think these are some of the most beautiful bird nests in nature because they are as well constructed as a woven basket, so small and tidy, and they're often built using hair from local animals. In this case, the mama bird used hair from my horse's mane or tail (the black). I'm not sure where the white hair came from - possibly a neighbor's horse - or maybe a long-forgotten artifact from a white horse I used to own. (How long does it take horse hair to biodegrade?)



The eggs are smaller than my thumbnail; the nest no more than two and a half inches across.

I'm sure I'll claim the nest when it's been abandoned, to add to my weird collection. At least I don't pin dead butterflies to cardboard, or something equally morbid.