Published by Richie February 24th, 2007
in Aghaming Birds.
©2007 Richie Swanson
The crow in the silver maple branch jabs its bill up and down like a mean old man pointing a finger in a rage. It barks and cackles and mocks and threatens. CAR-AR-ARGH! It dives down suddenly against another, and the two grapple and fall the length of the trunk, clawing, shouting, pecking, slapping wings. The bottom crow flies out from under, and four more crows chase it, and the raucous one lands in a cottonwood-top, hitching up its wing-shoulders, puffing up big beside a crow-partner, cawing bloody murder.
Continue reading ‘The Raucous One, 2-23-07′
Published by Richie February 17th, 2007
in Aghaming Birds.
©2007 Richie Swanson
The swamp white oak stands with the winter sun caressing his bark gently gold, a granddaddy tree on a forgotten backwater island on the upper Mississippi River. He stands nearly two centuries broad and bulbous, easily old enough to have been shadowed by flocks of passenger pigeons during the 1800s. The flocks may have contained millions, even billions, of birds, stretching a mile wide, taking hours to pass. They descended into oaks so densely they piled five and six-deep on one another’s backs, shrieking and fluttering so noisily other forest animals fled. They fed upon acorns, and today the old oak holds open his twisted-bulky limbs, but he catches no more passenger pigeons than I can grasp sunlight from his trunk.
Continue reading ‘Grandaddy Oak, 2-16-07′
Published by Richie February 15th, 2007
in Advertise Here.
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