April 20: Ospreys

how high the river 

pair of ospreys circling

the old mill’s smokestack

April 3: Brook trout

fishing hole

before the osprey returns

casting for trout

September 5: Osprey

Atop the schooner's mast

osprey has a lot to say

to us earthbound souls.

 

August 22: Gallery

shrill cries of an osprey

tourists perusing

paintings of the harbor

Posted with Blogsy

August 2: Fog

Enveloped by fog.

Atop the smokestack

unseen osprey crying.

Posted with Blogsy

April 14: Early bird

While we're talking on the phone

season's first Osprey

flies downriver.

Posted with Blogsy

August 21: Overheard

We can only hear it--

osprey keening in the fog

far from its nest.

Posted with Blogsy

July 19: Osprey nest

Atop the old mill's smokestack

nest of loud Ospreys.

The whole town hears them.

Posted with Blogsy

May 25: St. George River

above the river

where alewives used to run

osprey curls one foot

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

April 13: Osprey returns

First osprey of spring

keening loudly overhead:

I'm back. Remember?

Posted with Blogsy

August 21: Harbor

Dusk, Camden Harbor--

Osprey carries off a fish,

we wait to be seated.

July 13: Camden Harbor

Ospreys overhead
as we down our cocktails.
All's right with the world.

June 10: Rescue

A friend related today how she'd rescued an Osprey that had fallen down a smokestack. And my sister got a new hip.

In a dream, cupped bird,
my hands a nest.
How much can we save?

June 1: Osprey

Hit the road this morning for a week at the Yale School of Forestry taking an intensive class in conservation finance...

 

Osprey keens overhead

while we kiss goodbye

before my long drive.

Posted with Blogsy

May 11: Ospreys

Ah, life on the coast of Maine...

 

No longer on an island

but an osprey

still cries overhead.

Posted with Blogsy

April 19: Hawks returning

Here's what fills me with joy:
rich late afternoon light,
Ospreys overhead.

April 30: Osprey

This morning the shadow of a large bird moving through the trees manifested itself as a brown and white Osprey. It perched in a tree in the neighbor's yard, from which it could look down on the river. I think it was poised right over my husband's favorite fishing hole. The river's barely more than a stream where we live, but it serves as a wooded, watery pathway for Ospreys, eagles, and kingfishers. I never get too used to seeing them pass through my back yard.

Osprey watches the river.
It's all about positioning--
right place, right time.

April 15: Horror

Following the news of the bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, reading stories of indescribable horror. Why does it always shock us to learn, over and over again, that such evil exists in the world?

I've been frantically looking around for things to offer comfort--the season's first local Osprey, birdsong outside my office, learning that a poet whose work first inspired me to write poetry as a teenager (Sharon Olds) has won the Pulitzer Prize, praise from a Board member for work well done. But these are small things compared to people's lives.

Soaring Osprey, returned,
and singing sparrows--
sometimes this isn't enough.

August 30: Finding water

Family legend has it that my great-great-aunt Gladys (no longer with us but whom I remember fondly from childhood) was a dowser. She was one of those people who used a split branch of (usually) witch-hazel to find water. If you needed to dig a well, Aunt Glad was the one to call. She had the inner sense--one might even call it a power--to divine where the water was. I was always a bit disappointed that I didn't inherit the ability.

I was thinking of this when I heard the osprey keening this morning. We live on a river and often hear an osprey as it's following the water's course between lake and harbor. I realized that while I might not be able to help anyone plan where to drill their well, I do know how to tell when I'm close to a larger body of surface water: I just listen for the osprey.

Around here that's a no-brainer, but once years ago, hiking in the Cascades of Oregon, I remember being startled to hear an osprey crying overhead. I was surrounded by forest of Douglas firs on a trail that seemed to wind endlessly through the mountains. The shining white bird seemed so out of place in the setting that I worried I had heatstroke and was hallucinating an angel. But sure enough, the trail very soon began to follow the shore of a small lake--I should have realized the osprey was there for a reason.

There's a river out here,
reminds the osprey.
Come outside.

August 12: Sunday morning

Another quiet, misty morning on the coast of Maine, one of those mornings when I just want to stay in bed and listen to the noises of the neighborhood awakening...

Wakened by ospreys,

neighbor's singing and strumming.

Now, "shh" of rainfall.