Porcupine at Dusk

-


by Ingrid Wendt



Out of the bunch grass

out of the cheat grass

a bunch of grass waddles

my way.



Quill-tips bleached by winter four

inches down: crown of glory dark

at the roots: a halo

catching the sun's

final song:



No way could such steady

oblivion possibly live

up to legend, whatever

fear I might have had

is gone, but still I stop



Short on my after-dinner walk, no

collision course if I

can help it, thinking

at first it's the wind,

nudging a path out of the field



Or one of a covey of tumbleweed

lost like those today on the freeway,

racing ahead of my car that whole long drive

here to the banks of the Snake, to friends

so close they know

when to leave me alone.



As though I were nowhere around, the porcupine

shuffles the edge of the road,

in five minutes crosses

a distance I could have covered

in less than one



And disappears at last into cattails

and rushes, sunset, a vespers

of waterbirds, leaving me

still unwilling to move.



I am a sucker for scenes like this.

The slowest beauty can rush me.

And here I am,

all of my defenses down.


please note: photo by Sheila Skogen

Comments

Post a Comment

Hey, thanks for your thoughts and your time:>)

Popular posts from this blog

A Year with EB White

-
Image
"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."----- from Charlotte's Web I am a soul always drawn and fascinated by the idea of " A Year of...". A Year of Rumi. A Year of Calvin and Hobbes. A year cooking with Julia Child. A project that provides guidance for the year and a ruler we can measure inward growth in the course of our circle around the sun. One year, after an early marriage and an unsurprising--except to me--early divorce, I came across a book by Sue Hubbell titled A Country Year. I didn't plan for it to take a year to read, but it did. I only read it at night before I went t
Read more

The Poet Goes to Indiana by Mary Oliver

-
Image
I'll tell you a half-dozen things that happened to me in Indiana when I went that far west to teach. You tell me if it was worth it. I lived in the country with my dog— part of the bargain of coming. And there was a pond with fish from, I think, China. I felt them sometimes against my feet. Also, they crept out of the pond, along its edges, to eat the grass. I'm not lying. And I saw coyotes, two of them, at dawn, running over the seemingly unenclosed fields. And once a deer, but a buck, thick-necked, leaped into the road just-oh, I mean just, in front of my car— and we both made it home safe. And once the blacksmith came to care for the four horses, or the three horses that belonged to the owner of the house, and I bargained with him, if I could catch the fourth, he, too, would have hooves trimmed for the Indiana winter, and apples did it, and a rope over the neck did it, so I won something wonderful; and there was, one morning, an owl flying, oh pale angel, into the hay loft o
Read more

Goldfinches by Mary Oliver

-
Image
Some goldfinches were having a melodious argument at the edge of a puddle. The birds wanted to bathe, or perhaps just to dip their heads and look at themselves, and they were having trouble with who should be first, and so on. So they discussed it while I stood in the distance, listening. Perhaps in Tibet, in the old holy places, they also have such fragile bells. Or are these birds really just that, bells come to us--come to this road in America--let us bow our heads and remember now how we used to do it, say a prayer. Meanwhile the birds bathe and splash and have a good time. Then they fly off, their dark wings opening from their bright, yellow bodies; their tiny feet, all washed, clasping the air.
Read more