Contemplating Friendship at Owsley Fork Sanctuary
Contemplating Friendship at Owsley Fork Sanctuary
after Meng Hao-Jan
The road I live on is full of single-wides,
buzzards and dogs running free.
Today a bald eagle circled in the warm
thermal currents high above my forest cabin,
sun rippling through its white tail feathers.
As we argue about politics, a crotchety
neighbor brings soup when I’m coughing,
chopped hickory when my axe handle breaks.
14 thoughts on "Contemplating Friendship at Owsley Fork Sanctuary "
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warm and familiar for all this wildness, and then the kindness couched in the crotchety complaint of the neighbor. wonderful snapshot. ❤️
The juxtaposition of the natural world and the need/desire/appreciation for friends and neighbors works really well here …
Kevin
buzzards ripple
complicate/circle
thermals.
them old
souproad blues.
nice work. the right amount of hot/cold, dark/light.
I can see, hear, and feel it all.
Nice. Two things: One: I’m going to photograph that eagle one day; it’s on my bucket list. (I’ve already nailed the buzzards.) Two: Is this the first poem of yours that includes the words “Owsley Fork Sanctuary”? If so, it’s the first of many I hope.
Kevin, I trust the eagle will be here for quite a while. And yes, this is the first poem with the words “Owsley Fork Sanctuary.” I get in the mood to write about the sanctuary when I read Chinese or Japanese poetry. I’ll write more!
Interesting, that Asian connection. A number of people have said that some of my landscape photos taken at your place make them think of China or Japan. Is there some sort of mystic connection between Berea, Kentucky, and northeast Asia?
Good question. It’s also a bit eerie because I have — as an adult — had a weird mystical feeling tie particularly to Japanese poetry. Even my son noticed it and once gave me a gift of ancient poetry by Japanese women. If there’s anything to past lives I bet I had one in Japan.
YES!
Botanists are familiar with a concept sometimes known as “The Asian Connection.” In Hollows, Peepers, and Highlanders: An Appalachian Ecology (1994), George Constantz devotes an entire chapter to this topic.
“Here’s a claim that might surprise you,” Constantz noted. “The forests of eastern Asia and southern Appalachia are so similar that if you were swept from one to the other you would be hard-pressed to tell them apart.”
He went on to explain that, “At the genus and species levels this similarity involves more than 50 genera of Appalachian plants that are restricted to eastern North America and eastern Asia and, except in fossil form, are absent in between.”
Part of the theory is that during the era of Pangea (the supercontinent, parts of Asia, Europe and North America had similar plant communities. As the supercontinent drifted apart, many of those plant communities died out in Europe, western Asia, and western North America, leaving the Asian and Appalachian communities intact but widely separated.
This poem is meditative and intuitive. It feels like a brush painting.
what a vibrant poem <3
<3 It sounds truly lovely
Love the juxtaposition of the beauty of the natural world alongside the crotchety neighbor.