Writing

• The consequence of reading poetry at 5 am

  Sick with a head cold, and possibly more. And it kept me up last night. So I read from Billy Collins' collection "Water Water".  And this poem came about.  The house is silentSave for the aquarium’s flowAnd the strange, subtle noiseThe fridge is famous for And the occasional buzz of the phoneAs it vibrates out

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• Hummingbird

  I rather like this memory, written while watching a Hermit hummingbird in Panama on a live cam.   Jungles are dark, mostly anyway The sunshine eaten by canopiesFar above the floor ruled by antsDark until a falling tree rips free the light I’ve sat in a tree fall, Before saplings could finish their raceAnd close

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• Living forever

  A little poem from last night, that might resonate.   My daughter holds her niece,My granddaughter,Against her chestAs they watch tv. Blue’s Clues. She likes that show,My granddaughter They’re quiet, still,And I want to live foreverTo watch them growInto their namesInto their grey hair Into flowered dresses Into forever My fear isn’t that l will

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• Thirteen ways

  A poet I follow, mostly on his channel (stack?) Poetry Unbound on Substack, is Pádraig Ó Tuama. In his latest post he speaks about Wallace Stevens' excellent poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, and the entire genre of poetry it inspired. If you are unfamiliar with the poem you really should search it

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• Eulogy

  It has been over five years since my dad passed away. He has always been the man I most wish I was. And, as is often the case when we lose people, I think of the history that is lost when they go, like a library disappearing. I still find myself to this day thinking

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• Poetry inaction

  So, I haven't done a thing since reactivating the blog. And perhaps that's another thing I need to work on.  I truly miss the communities that sprang up around blogging.  One thing I've done more of since leaving this place has been to try my hand at poetry.  I've long wished I could express myself

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• Beat it.

  I'm in some pretty good company. As of today, I'm one of the beat writers for the fantastic bird/birding blog, 10,000 Birds. My "beat" is the Canadian Arctic. And while as a bird writer I probably have that niche sewn up, I keep looking at the other beat writers that are also joining 10,000 Birds

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• Its gone…

  If you've ever wondered what it would be like, the sound, the sensations, to have an F4 tornado to pass over you then you must read Debby's account at Drawing the Motmot. Debby, an incredible artist and the wonderful writer of Drawing the Motmot, has just posted her experiences sitting in their shelter as their

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• April First Friday

  I almost missed First Friday this month (as I had last month). First Friday, for those who may not know it, is a fiction writing contest over at WildBird on the Fly, the blog run by the incomparable Amy Hooper. The premise is simple, write a piece of fiction of 500 words or less, that

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• First (um, Third actually) Friday – The January edition

  Amy at WildBird on the Fly, just released the latest results for the belated First Friday for January. Congratulations go out to the Marvelous in Nature's own Seabrooke Leckie.  She wrote the winning entry this month (sometimes in the last three hours before the deadline – talented or what?) of an unexpected surprise on a

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