Date: Fri, 03 May 2013 09:23:02 -0400
From: mystic
Subject: possum parade – Musing with Spring
possum parade
5-3-13
wm mason
Copyright 2013 -All rights reserved
www.MysticMerchant.com
just before Spring arrived
while out tending my goats
who were grazing in the woodlot
quiet of fallen leaves
honeysuckle still low to the ground
poison ivy still weeks away from awakening
as the goats moved from tempting
weed to grassy tuft
speaking in soft grunts
high squawks
ears vigilant
tails telegraphing their content
to everything in their world
here there comes rolling syncopated
tiny voiced crunch of leaves
gray tails twitching
noses sniffing the air
you can hear them listening
for audacious earthworms
cutworms and mealy bugs
as they amble my woods
the goats ignore the possum parade
winding in between them
following trails invisible to goats
I watch as they ramble around
an old brush pile
ascending its spine
there in the gray of decaying trunks
they disappear
their den next door to the groundhogs
not too far from the red tail foxs’
who on a long slanted sunset evening
had shown me just how glorious
my pastures really are
as they ran full speed from
top to bottom
from ridge to creek
allowing me to share
for those few moments
their trembling joy
to have legs
muscles
energy
desire
wonder and awe
shared
with a beautiful partner
whose gleaming coat
full of sibilant colors
shimmering in the last rays
of the sun
and as suddenly gone
til I was left
in twilights embrace
to ponder
how much gravity
has slowed my body
worn down my joints
my cartilage
reminding me
that my oldest friend
my observant self
in never changing 25 year old certainty
is daily being usurped
by shovels, tillers and chainsaws
wheel barrows not so full anymore
of being more closely connected
with the soil
as I weed
my butt getting wet as my knees once did
still I put seeds in
ever excited by their promise
ever more daring
this year strange hibiscus call to me
Brugmansias with double flowers
white Datura, opium poppies, zebra hollyhocks & heirloom tomatoes from China
all streaked with purple
here I pause
listening with the possums
to the earthworms
whose songs sing of the love
of making compost
much as do my own….