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A soothing
peace pervades our countryside,
A shelter from the highrise urban agitation
Ridden by anxiety.
The foliage these days is rainbow color (but for blue),
Successful in its bid to lure the landscape painters
With their easels and acrylic arsenals
Emerging from the comfort of their studios.
A family
of deer strolls casually past me
From the crewcut cornfields toward the woods,
Uncanny silent in their tread,
Admiringly seen leaping over head-high fences in a graceful arc
While the mother confident is shepherding her fast-grown young
Who soon will strike out on their own.
A raccoon,
masked for mischief, darts before the car at dusk,
Evading, barely, crush by steel-belt tire.
An ugly younger duck, bewildered by the decoys,
Can’t tell wood-duck from a wood duck,
Cannot fathom why he’s victim of a water-bird cold shoulder.
Soon he morphs to duckling-out-of-water.
The theater
of autumn
With its cast of wildlife unpredictable
Spreads its blanket over creek and field
As chilly turn the nights
Now crowned by peacetime squadrons
of the geese from Canada,
In soaring magic V-formations overhead---
A hundred, maybe two---
All sounding deafening alarms when startled,
Calming to their gentle honking when they seek nocturnal rest.
Fatigued
by that day’s wanderings,
Ere long these minions of that intermittent ruler Night
fall fast to sleep.
---Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay, Md.
©2007 by Paul Hertelendy. The illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This poem first posted Oct. 29, 2007.
Paul Hertelendy is critic
and webmaster for the arts-review web site www.artssf.com, and
is also the Piedmont (CA) Centennial poet laureate. To visit his
website, click here: PAUL
You can comment
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"The Editors" or Paul Hertelendy. To send an email,
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