It’s like the old Tarzan movies:
White hunters find their way barred
By skulls on sticks.
The Park Service has erected
A pavilion on the rim.
Beware, it says.
Quicksand. Flash floods.
How to Resuscitate Lightning Strike Victims
One warning tells.
It pretends helpful information,
But it is another white skull.
On a sideboard, the complete caveat—
A man pierced all through with sticks.
We are loath to [...]
Perched benignly on the sage
he mistook it for a damselfly—so
softly were its wings folded against
its ripening body,
freshly emerged from a confining
pupal case. It seemed resigned
to die, as if it bowed to fate,
despite seeing clearly the trap
descending,
the butterfly net he wielded was a
destiny just too wide, too deep to
muster a pretense of escape.
Perhaps it remembered the [...]
Mark Twain on the tundra: At times, that’s how this 1963 classic played to my mind. Farley Mowat’s sense of humor—often self-directed—and the acuity of his social criticism reminded me so much of Twain’s acerbic wit that I found myself reading Mowat but seeing in the text Sam Clemens’ ghost—flowing white hair, white mustache, white [...]
Swallows skim the glass
Of a beaver pond, drinking
From their reflections.