May 14: Fish Ladder

masses of alewives
the childless woman
doesn’t get it

May 25: St. George River

above the river

where alewives used to run

osprey curls one foot

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

May 5: Alewives

A friend and I visited the historic fish ladder in Damariscotta Mills this morning at high tide and then again this afternoon at low tide. We were mesmerized by the undulating masses of thousands of fish, as they struggled past the gauntlet of gulls up the watery staircase and through a mill pond to eventually reach their spawning grounds in Damariscotta Lake.

Alewives head upstream
in swirling fin mandalas--
oh, to be that sure.

Self-portrait with fish

April 26: Shadbush

As I was driving away from my office today on an errand, I stopped the car in wonder at a beautiful flowering tree that I had somehow completely overlooked in front of the building. Granted, the tree is not outside my windows. And most of the flower-bearing branches are well above my line of sight. But still, you'd think I'd have noticed a 30-foot-high tree laden with sweet, white blossoms! The sun shining on it made all the white petals glow. The tree stood there like a revelation, an amazing artifact of spring. How could I have missed it all the years I've been working at the Land Trust? What's even worse is that I walked under that very tree earlier in the day without even noticing all those flowers over my head.

Something about seeing a leafless branch that has burst into blossom always gets me. It's as if the spring air had tugged them out of the wood, a small miracle. I think this particular miracle is a shadbush, though the shadbush trees I'm used to seeing in the woods are usually much smaller. The flowers look right, however, and "Forest Trees of Maine" says that shadbush (or serviceberry) can grow to 40 feet.

The shadbush blooms when shad are running. Shad are anadromous fish similar to alewives, so whenever I see the shadbush in bloom I know alewives will be running soon through Great Salt Bay and up the fish ladder in Damariscotta Mills. If a flowering tree is a small miracle, the alewife run is a big one. So this glorious tree is just the beginning...

Pulled from wood by sun,
shadbush blossoms remind me
of spring's miracles.