Today has been almost summer-like. Very warm, very breezy, and very sleepy. A paper wasp worked under the eaves, a damselfly hunted in the irises, and something mantis-like prowled through the hydrangea. I did small, invisible chores in the house and in my office. Now I’m ready to find a quiet corner, curl up with the cats, and open the new book on my nightstand. Page one…
In case you’re wondering, the book is Rocks of Ages by Stephen Jay Gould.
It was a beautiful day for a walk with friends, and Norfolk Botanical Garden provided a beautiful setting. Warm sun, gentle breeze, and acres of flowers. I didn’t see many bees and butterflies, but there were plenty of turtles. And geese. Even a pair of nesting eagles…
Science
Our questions sprout
Like brambles
Dense with unseen truths
Quivering and tense as rabbits
Flushed into the open
When spoken aloud
Darting across the tongue
A disturbance in the listener’s ear
That flees barely glimpsed
Back into conjecture
Understanding a footprint
Of what might have been alive
What tore its warmth free of thorns
And escaped into possibility
Leaving only the suggestion
Of what was hiding
Safe as a copse
As a thicket
Amid the sprawling undergrowth of science
Pricking with the need to be known
Winter made another run through the yard last night, and today finds me yearning for the sun-filled, dragonfly days of summer. This photo, from last July, was one of the first I took with my iPhone camera. I was experimenting with the Photoshop Express application…
Feeling Loss
It might feel cold
Like the open ocean
Where cold rays
Cast their semen and eggs
Into vast seas
And do no pause to dwell
On species
Or the fate of genes
Or any other clutch
Of dry, reptilian lust
Chemical attractants
And the scrape of scale
Need coiled around instinct
Cold fusion
Where there is no heat
Or it might feel empty
Absence of weight and form
A floating motion
Without memory of soaring
Brief puff of spore
All conceivable futures
Condensed
Into a mote of dust
Arms closing around air
In blank embrace
Filled with empty memory
A boundless sigh
As the ghost of passion
Slips away
Upon the changing tide
Photos taken at the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center
Rae Spencer 