Epiphany

Epiphany

I intended a peregrine—

it arrived at Godspeed.

There had been a dearth of peregrines you see.

I longed for eagles

and after many years, they returned to us

in abundance,

dancing on air streams,

spiraling courtships high in the air

then talons clasped

plummeting then

nesting in white pines.

After a dry season

our mountain ash bows with orange fruit

whereupon flocks of eager waxwings

gorge on orange berries this cold winter day.

I intended for the Holy Spirit to descend

in this season of epiphany

and its fire entered me and surrounded me

as a haze around Saturn in the

evening sky just above the horizon line.

It glowed unearthly bright that night.

On epiphany, my wishes and intentions are

for peregrines, eagles, waxwings

and the little Holy Child to stay with me

as eagles play in the airstreams,

as trees burst with nurture

and brightness forms our days.

 

Excerpted from my book, Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below

Review of the Dynamic Great Lakes by Barbara Spring

U.S. Water News - Peter Wild


Are dinosaurs cruising the benthic depths of the Great Lakes even while we go about our daily tasks? Not exactly. Yet sturgeon, fish weighing up to 300 pounds and similarly plated with armor,are nosing around down there. Occasionally you can see the monsters appear, making their spawning runs up rivers and surfacing like submarines in the pools beneath waterfalls... The five Great Lakes, holding nearly twenty percent of the earth's fresh water, are quite young. Gouged out by glaciers, they assumed their present shapes a mere 3,000 years ago. For that, they are a dynamic shifting system, still changing and exhibiting surprising differences. Lake Ontario, for example, the easternmost, although smallest of the bodies, holds more water than Lake Erie, its shallower nearby sister. Here's a handy primer for all such things, from the interaction of phytoplankton and calcium carbonate that gives a white cast to these inland oceans come August and helps clean the water to the charming ice volcanoes spouting chilly "lava" in the winter.

This is intriguing stuff for adults, but the straightforward presentation also lends itself to use in schools, beginning about the sixth grade and up. And yes, we get the latest news on the zebra mussel, the tube nose goby, and other threats to the natural scheme of things. Also good news; how since the banning of DDT in the 1970's, the bald eagles have come back.

Environmental Success Story

The American bald eagle was nearly wiped out by DDT and like pesticides that were used after World War II. Since these poisons take many years to break down, they were caught up in Great Lakes food webs and affected the fish eating birds such as the eagles.

The eagles are higher on the food pyramid than humans since they eat only fish and meat, but fish eating humans were also being poisoned by these insecticides.

My community was the first to ban DDT that was used to control the Dutch elm beetle in the park in front of our house. My husband and I formed a committee to get it stopped and after this was accomplished, we joined others to form the Michigan Pesticides Council that met at MSU. This was a grass roots movement and it was part of a national movement.

As a result of this work, the eagles have returned to the Great Lakes as well as peregrine falcons and ospreys. Read more about this in The Dynamic Great Lakes
This book is available online at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many other stores.