field sarpedon Flowers, scattered with an Open pool reflection, Several frogs gently hopping From land to liquid and back. She cannot help but touch and Sniff each perfection Of seven thousand varieties Filling her vision It's not any individual part, But the totality of the Interaction, gathering Her senses and tossing them Back, again and again. The walk, the creaking, Wooden fence that lines her Territory, nothing foreboding But just a gentle reminder Of her chosen bounds for the day And the difficulty in walking-- There is no path, so treading Necessarily disturbs the Natural grounds. But what good is nature If it isn't to be explored And enjoyed? So she settles, and sits By the pond shore Contemplating about the Lonely tree in the field, Whose reflection shone in Soft ripples approaching Her sandals, but not quite Making it 020726 ... ovenbird Just a few blocks away from my first home the streets gave way to open fields. I could walk right up to the line between human habitation and the earth’s natural inclinations—tall grasses and wildflowers, brown stalks twisted with frost, scrims of ice that gave way to mud, wasps and spiders and mice and rabbits, everything going to seed as summer turned to fall. And so I always knew that there was a world beyond this human one, that we had superimposed ourselves on landscapes that predated our arrival, that something irretrievable was lost with every new subdivision and every new sidewalk. I was afraid of the field, in some ways. Its unruly wildness meant that you couldn’t tell what was in there, under the weedy tangles. Snakes maybe. Centipedes. Woodlice eating what rots. Poisonous mushrooms. I didn’t belong to the field. I wasn’t a bird. I wasn’t a mole. My home was four walls set upon a skunk infested crawlspace with floor beams striving towards decay. I didn’t play in the field. I played in my yard, trimmed and mowed, though never entirely subdued. Dandelions took the lawn through sheer numbers, ants came up through cracks in the driveway. I would walk to the end of the road and look out over the field. It was a force beyond my own understanding, a presence, a reminder that I shared this planet with beings that spoke languages incomprehensible to me. It made me humble. It’s gone now, of course. Paved over a long time ago. Townhomes stand where the hollow reeds once bent themselves to breathy music. There is no edge, no giving way to wilderness, just concrete as far as the eye can see. And the children who grow there think everything belongs to them, and they have no fear. In the basement they keep shoes specifically for the purpose of crushing the bodies of anything with too many legs for comfort. 260408 what's it to you? who go blather from