Swamped!

Wash Day Fibonacci

No

more

traces

of trail mud

beach sand       river silt

I’ve folded Florida’s laundry.

*** 

I bid you all a good May day, writing once again from the South edge of Lake Ontario. The snowbirds have alit.  Ahhhhhhhh, we're home!

But that's not to say we didn't enjoy the slow road to Ed Rose Shores. Our two-week meandering in swamps, riverine bottomlands and a Gulf beach one last time thrown in for good measure with Apalachicola oysters on the side.  Two downpours  (as we huddled in our tent), a mild case of food poisoning, and a gray squirrel who ate our cooler (well, just one corner gnawed through badly enough to ruin it), didn't deter us from hiking woodland boardwalks at Congeree National Park (bottomlands -- see http://www.nps.gov/cong/index.htm) and the Audubon Center at Beidler Forest (cypress-tupelo swamp -- see http://beidlerforest.audubon.org/), two islands of sanity in south Carolina, and both bearing us generous gifts.

One of those gifts was the prothonotary warbler pictured above.  Yes!  High-five time!  We saw the bird at long last, a bird-first made even more memorable by the companionship of Gerry and Marcy Withrow, friends of our from the Amazon II (Peru) expedition.  They are sanctuaries unto themselves.  It was a day to share the birds (also added hooded warbler and Mississippi kit to ours bird-first list)...and admire the greening world of old-growth bald cypress with their fantastical "knees" whorling out of slow slough water, fortifying the trees in the wetland forest. A close-up of one such knee evokes for me a fairy tale: Once upon a time yellow-feathered creature nested here.

For more about the prothonotary warbler, see http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/prothonotary_warbler/lifehistory.

*** 

We met up with quite a different species of tree on the "Forgotten Coast" of Florida's eastern panhandle. Oh, Pinus lustrous -- rare long-leaf pine -- of remnant southern groves in which we indeed saw its signature bird, the red-cockaded woodpecker again. And nearby Ochlockonee River State Park (http://www.floridastateparks.org/ochlockoneeriver/) where we camped is Carabelle Beach. It was there I took a series of photographs of erstwhile slash pines (Pinus elliotii). Quite the contrast to long-leaf's majestic luster. It was good for the soul to come across those metaphors of erosion, for death -- another species of beauty that was so unexpected.

*** 

We also made a stop to visit our beloved friends Gary and Iris in West Virginia, which, as has become our tradition, entailed a day in Washington, DC.  This time we visited historic Dumbarton Oaks (http://www.doaks.org/) in Georgetown, a property belonging to Harvard University that houses two impressive collections of Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art and is equally remarkable for its expansive gardens. The four of us arrived in time to see the wisteria in full fragrant bloom.  Ahhh! The day was a wonderful reminder that cities can be places of beauty too.

***


The Fibonacci poem (eight lines, consisting of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 syllables, if you'll recall) that opened this posting pretty much sums up our re-entry to life in Western New York. But there's a lot more more happening around these domestic parts than laundry (and endless mowing of lawn) as we settle into our northern roost.

If you'd like to read some more Karla poems recently published on the Internet, I invite you to explore:

• Pyrokinection! Hop over to http://www.pyrokinection.com/ ... just scroll down to the April 27 entry. Many thanks to editor A.J. Huffman!
•  Don't miss About Place Journal where guest editor Annie Finch outdid herself with an issue themed around trees! In my poem you'll meet up with yet another pine tree, Pinus strobus. "He" has quite the story to tell.
• Check out Wilda Morris’s Poetry Challenge http://wildamorris.blogspot.com/  -- Each month poet Wilda Morris, whom I first "met" when editing The Dire Elegies: 59 Poets on Endangered Species of North America (FootHills Publishing, 2006), dares poets to take on a topic. Last month the call to action was to: "Read about, think about, or best of all, go outdoors and spend time with crows. Write a poem in which crows play an important role. They may just be themselves, crows in the natural world. Or they may be may be metaphors." My "Ghazal of the Crow" tied for the winning poem. 
• And, last but not least, I invite all of  you within range to attend the launch reading for my two new books, Lithic Scatter and Other Poems and Attaining Canopy: Amazon Poems. Please join me on May 18 at Lift Bridge Books, 45 Main Street, Brockport, NY, at 2 p.m.  It's free and open to the public.  Not only am I excited about "going public" with my two new books, I'm more so because my beloved Roger selected the poems he'd like you all to hear!  Hope to see you there...and if not, know that you can order copies of Lithic Scatter from http://www.amazon.com/Lithic-Scatter-Other-Poems-Merrifield/dp/0988227991/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368015190&sr=8-1&keywords=karla+linn+merrifield or email me to obtain a signed copy (sans shipping fees).  To get a copy of Attaining Canopy, visit http://www.foothillspublishing.com/.

...and hope your spring is as beautiful as the many springs Roger and I enjoyed on our way north.  Any day now the wisteria in our neighborhood will be bursting into purple perfume.

 

See you next time from...

 

...New Mexico! where Roger and I will alight at month's end for desert hikes and my Lithic Scatter book tour!

Gathering Up Brokenness

I’ve been stymied for three+ weeks about how to do what I wanted to do: weave a great horned owl and Leonard Cohen into a single cohesive blog posting.  Then it dawned on me; I’ll just plunk those two disparate elements down on the page the same way life presented them to me.  First one, then the other. Bam. Bam. Hmmm…surprising juxtapositioning may amuse.

First, I give this post lift off with Bubo virginianus, the owl who came to tea towards sunset on Site #97 at Everglades National Park’s Long Pine Key campground on the Vernal Equinox Eve. (See http://www.owlpages.com/owls.php?genus=Bubo&species=virginianus.)

There we were, my beloved Roger and I, in the March evening light, pale half-moon overhead the eve of the Leonard Cohen concert in nearby Maimi, listening to the master of song’s most famous song, Hallelujah on my MP3 player broadcast over minipod speaker. I was trying to convey to Roger that it’s the greatest anthem of love of the modern era. Everybody’s recorded it. A whole book has been written about this one song by The New York Times contributor Alan Light.  I’d just read it to psych myself for the concert. Now this is Leonard Cohen at his best, I pronounced as Roger dutifully tuned in, sipping his Honeybush tea, nibbling an I’d-Marry-You-All-Over-Again cookie.

Suddenly a sharp cry came from just behind our site at pine forest edge.

What’s that? Catbird? Nah, can’t be, I said.

Roger reached across the upended bin “table,” put his left hand on my arm and with his right hand pointed up toward the trees.

Ohmigod, a great horned owl, I whispered. Lo and behold, there was the great big bird in full view lording it over us from only thirty feet back and thirty feet up, staring down on us. With one tap of a fingertip, I shut down my gizmo  Mid-Hallelujah.  Halle— And in the ensuing quiet, I whispered, Ohmigod, it’s a hallelujah owl! The great horned was a great gift from the Universe delivered to us and us alone at Site #97.

Since my camera was right there, I didn’t even have to launch myself out of my camp chair; I just leaned to the right, held my hands steady and shot.  And shot. And shot. In low Everglades evening’s subtropical light, I captured the hallelujah owl. Then I put my camera down to just stare back.

He cried twice more. It wasn’t the usual basso profundo Who? hoot, but a fierce one-note cry, one piercing deep screech. A mating call? His Bubo hallelujah?

Roger held my hand and we watched the magisterial creature in silence until he swooped silently away. We figured a good five minutes we’d sat in the great one’s great presence on Vernal Equinox Eve.

The next night? The great man himself at the William P. Knight Center. Forty-five years I’d been following Leonard Cohen and for the first time, on the Equinox no less, I got to see him in person. Ever since Suzanne, in the 1960s, near the beginning of his music career. This year I’m sixty, and he’s seventy-nine, two years’ shy of Roger.

And you know what? Leonard’s still doing it like a pro.  I’m still swooning.

For three-and-a-half hours, maybe thirty songs – including Hallelujah with the entire house singing the chorus – the man did it to me sooooooooooooo good. And Roger too was mesmerized to be with me in Cohen’s great presence at my all-time, best-ever musical experience, yes, the very best of my lifetime.

Goodness, how do you synthesize that great owl, that great man? How bind together into an unbroken skein of words? A poem answered:

Following Leonard Cohen’s Lead

Hallelujah owl – the great horned who-er

of Everglades pines, magisterial, mythical

by Equinox Eve half-moon, come

to gather up our brokenness on silent wings.

Hallelujah stilt – black-necked ilk

skating spring Equinox shallows,

score of more on skinny legs come

to gather up our brokenness, banish the hunger.

Hallelujah storks, hallelujah spoonbills—

woodies and pinkos of Parotis Pond’s

rookeries, dozens abuzz as if come

to gather up our brokenness with procreation.

Hallelujah, birds— we fly, we feed, we breed

the wild, our imagination made entire.

                                    for Roger

*** 

P.S. Having celebrated Roger’s 81^st birthday last week with an outing to Lovers Key beach one last time this winter, we now prepare to depart for home on Sunday. As I pack up for the season, I’ll leave behind for you, dear reader,  these humble gifts of poetry.

• This one is definitely for the birds…and bird lovers. It’s a new anthology, Poised In Flight, from Kind of a Hurricane Press, and holds within its pages three of my poems. Read online at https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-DuKJaq66ClSkR4dWxzNFBSN0E/edit - or order a copy in paperback, available at  http://www.amazon.com/Poised-Flight-A-J-Huffman/dp/1482734222/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364912710&sr=8-1&keywords=Poised+in+Flight  Thank you, Hurricane editor Amy Huffman!

• Check out Steel Toe Review’s annual anthology at http://steeltoereview.com/2013/02/06/three-poems-by-karla-linn-merrifield-2/ Great to be in such great company, including one of my poet-heros, Jim Daniels.

• Editors Michele Lesko and Sherry O’Keefe have outdone themselves with the new issue of Ithaca Lit. Fine, fine work there too!http://ithacalit.com/karla-linn- merrifield1.htm

• I was exceedingly delighted to be published (nice and cozily with editor Walter Ruhlmann) in the new erotica issue of mgv2datura:   http://issuu.com/mgversion2/docs/mgv2_72?mode=window&viewMode=doublePage It’s also available in paperback as you’ll see on the site. Hot stuff!

• I’ve made a new poet –friend in ghazal master Gene Doty, who edits The Ghazal Page, a journal devoted to the ancient Persian poetic form. In March, to my delight, he published three of my ghazals in March. To read two of them, go to http://www.ghazalpage.net/2013/march-03.html

• And, last but not least, I’m most proud of the new issue of The Centrifugal Eye (http://www.centrifugaleye.com – and available as a collector’s edition from Lulu at http://www.lulu.com/shop/eve-anthony-hanninen-editor/the-centrifugal-eye-winterspring-2013/paperback/product-20943054.html) Look for a poem, two photographs and my book review column as well as the illuminating poetry by Colleen Powderly, Tim Diggles, Janice D. Soderling and, oh my, many other fine poets and artists. Editor Eve Hanninen is the empress of editors.

And, please, if you haven’t done so already, order a copy of my new Lithic Scatter and Other Poems: http://www.amazon.com/Lithic-Scatter-Other-Poems-Merrifield/dp/0988227991/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364661594&sr=8-1&keywords=karla+linn+merrifield  Or, drop me an email to get a signed copy (with no shipping/handling fees).

And, take note: Coming in May:  My new book of poetry and photography, Attaining Canopy: Amazon Poems from FootHills Publishing.

Also, if you’re in the Western New York area this spring, please join me for my official launch reading for both Lithic Scatter and Attaining Canopy. That’s Saturday, May 18 at 2 p.m. at Lift Bridge Book Store, 45 Main Street, Brockport, NY. It’s free and open to the public; refreshments will be served and I’ll be signing books.

Happy spring to all!  And thank you for reading.