Nature

Spider in View

Within a mirror shell
    A metal lair, a spiders dome.

Overnight!
woven, and knitted;
each spar and junction tethered,
this sunning patio spans the reflected world!

Engine turning noises, . . .
spider remains web centered,
accelerating, . . . and holding fast!
. . . h o l d i n g . . . f a s t!

Nearing Maximum Velocity,
retreat begins,
slipping, and recovering,
walk buffeted walk!,
Hold on, h o l d o n!, . . . 

Oak Wood

Your Oak leaves luster on emergence;
lightly verdant, tender. before aphids laser feasts
or braille clustered galls,
before stripping wind, before sun and desiccating drought.
Yet; each of your photo-synthesizing factories, did vascularly grow this ring of Oak wood.

Palmer Haynes
August 2002

Sand Hill gleaners

Sand Hill’s

     Once Nebraska
again in Indiana,
view was only from hidden blinds.
Their grace, their courtship dance
held us in awe.

     Township birds
elongated and aerodynamic
pass close, very close.
Glide just above tasseled corn,
our pleasant surprise

     Trees blind
their modulated wing strokes.
This pair for life, reappear
descend on Tom Sutter’s
golden wheat stubble.

Sand Hill’s are gleaners.

Palmer R. Haynes

© August, 2015


Photos by Catherine Haynes, taken at the Audubon crane blind on the Platte River in 2009