A tortoise can stretch it out, when life depends; but a snail not so much.
Maybe the head of the mushroom grows faster than the snail can run, but how shall she dismount?

Ticket to ride.

Six feet of blacksnake in the grass points to the tree with six bird feeders.
Can he unhinge his jaw enough to swallow a gold finch or a nuthatch?
We used to see whole eggs along the gullet every time we’d relocate the guy half a mile away
who’d returned to rob our chicken coop again.
It took a week to digest his dinner and crawl back.
He discouraged the broody hens better than we could.

Pointing at …

 Maybe it isn’t birds. The feeders are a creature magnet, even for rabbits and deer.
It could be squirrels, gray or red or the white-belly fliers (when you fly at night, wear white).
Or ground squirrels or kangaroo mice or Noreegan wharf rats (so far from a wharf, so far from Norway).

All my length.

A couple dozen tree species crowd this brief segment of the ring around the lawn.
The largest temperate rain forest is in Alaska.
I think we’re next: not many steps to fill the leaf book of a fourth-grade science class.

Leaf scape.

A table rose, for company, two feet away this instant.
White, the outside of the petals, inside hot fuchsia, as my love is.

Red, red rose.

The black flower is in the house.

Black velvet.

The red outside.
The thick sticky golden pollen is the same.

Velvet red.

And a little ways into the woods, the Dr. Seuss flowers stretch thin and wide, enticing.

Wood note wild.

Such abundance here, where peace and beauty overflow.
But threats surround us that are imminent—to our earth and food and water and air.

Amid the rumble of half a hundred human wars and war’s alarms,
I know I can’t be young again, but still shall hold her in my arms.

Salaam. Shalom.

Tags: bergemont, blacksnake, dahlia, hitchhiker, mushroom, red rose, rose, snail, true love