Tag: Badlands

Grateful Visitor at the Beach

Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by Tricia HERE. Thank you, Tricia, for hosting. I hope everyone is anticipating a peaceful summer. Mine will be a little busy and exciting, too, as our eldest son is getting married in San Francisco this summer. Big Yay!!!

There is no planning for me to do. (Another Big Yay!!!) I only hope we will get there in some appropriate wedding clothes.

I’m beginning this post with a quote. 

LIVE IN THE SUNSHINE, SWIM IN THE SEA, DRINK THE WILD AIR.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, found here.)

When I visited Santa Cruz, California last winter for a family visit, we walked along the ocean walkway drinking in the wild air and sea.

I was astounded, the density of wildlife, like these cormorants below, hanging out on rocks. I wrote a haiku previously about them for National Poetry Month Here.

I saw seals swimming under a pier, and mossy rocks like these, covered with pelicans:

The natural environment here, this amazing setting, is a magnet for surfers in wet suits, with a surfing museum and monuments to celebrate the sport:

SANTA CRUZ HAIKU

Pelicans and seals
Surfers out chasing the waves—
Earth their canvas.

A memorial to surfers who lived their lives celebrating the waves:

But the sky, the ocean and the wildlife, though resilient, are fragile. 

A Walk on the Santa Cruz Beach

How can it be that 
human life
can change something 
as huge and ancient
as our planet?

Today, I walk softly--
 
in awe of the thousands 
of cormorants and pelicans
diving and fishing
along the Santa Cruz coast,
on rocks glistening black.

©Janice Scully 2023

What would Santa Cruz be like without the rugged coastline, the birds, and the surfers? What would Syracuse, my home, be like without hills, lakes, and hundreds of robins to hear and watch?

What is the environment like where you live, the plants and animals that you think is special, that you’d like to protect? In the Badlands of South Dakota, below, perhaps rattlesnakes help make it a special place, to be respected.

Thank you, Tricia, for hosting. Happy June!!!

Water and Heat

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Mary Lee HERE. She has turned one of Lindas “clunkers” into delightful verse about green beans. Thank you, Mary Lee, for hosting!

Today I sat on my porch with a glass of iced coffee, water dripping from the glass, thinking about summer and the 92 degree heat, listening to the sounds of insects, imagining the heat rippling upward from my suburban street.

The heavy air bore down and the loud chirp of the crickets or cicadas in the trees did too, in peaked crescendoes.

I documented the day in haiku:

HEAT

rippling off asphalt
practically invisible—
searching for water

WATER

In all things alive.
Clear, cool, modest miracle
quietly cycles. 


SUMMER SOUNDS

Sweltering back porch.
Leaves wave as cricket sounds flow
like ocean waters.

I wanted to celebrate the living things around me and the interdependence in nature that supports us.

Everything everyone does, day to day, involves water. Water is part of all that is alive and beautiful in the world. I am grateful for heat, too, appreciating as the temps rise how it is moderated so it doesn’t hurt us, balanced by water in lakes, rivers and oceans.

Below is Skaneateles Lake in the Fingerlakes, where I can practically see the water cycling and cooling the air. I recently read how, in the 1800’s, as America grew westward, acres of swamps and wetlands, considered useless and even dangerous, were destroyed to create farmland. White settlers moving out west didn’t appreciate the role wetlands play as thermostat. We know more now about the need for wetlands.

Skaneateles Lake in the Fingerlakes of New York State

On my road trip to California earlier this year, I passed through South Dakota, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, and saw many hot places with few trees, endless rocks, and little water, like the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, or parts of the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

The Badlands

The Petrified Forest National Park

So I’m celebrating water and I know I’m not the only one feeling the urgency to protect our environment.

Thank you Mary Lee for hosting!