A New Day

Hi everyone,

This morning Goose Lake reminds me of the poem I wrote about such a morning in my one and only e-book, GOOSE LAKE, A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A LAKE. Here’s the Amazon link if you’re interested. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=goose+lake+david+l+harrison&ref=nb_sb_noss The book is illustrated by Sladjana Vasic. The foreword was written by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong. GOOSE LAKE is priced at $1.99.

A NEW DAY

Some mornings know how to get it right. Across the lake treetops blush scarlet at the new dawn. Light strips black bedclothes and the new day rushes in fresh and barelegged.

A dove in a maple sings, “Who are you? Who? Who? Who?” A sparrow snatching a nervous breakfast at our feeder chirps with its mouth full. A robin captures a walnut tree and brags loudly of its conquest. Down-lake a sapsucker picks up drilling where it left off yesterday.

Hackberry trees, their new leaves curled in pale green rolls, look like they’re getting ready for a spring prom. The last dawdling skunk plods off toward the woods to sleep off the night’s foraging. Goose Lake, first thing in the morning, is at its best.

Face smooth from sleep
the lake awakens,
dabs on rouge –
a gift of the rising sun –
and opens for business.

Two ducks rippling
across the surface
begin to write the day.

(c) 2011 David L. Harrison, all rights reserved
Published GOOSE LAKE, A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A LAKE, 2011

Royalty visits Goose Lake

Hi everyone,

Frozen lake day. Birds have tiptoed across the ice but mostly they stick together on land or in the corner of the lake where a natural spring keeps the water from freezing. It gets crowded in that small space with many more birds than usual pressed together. It would be like shooting ducks in a tub, so to speak.

When I look off through my hackberry tree on the left with binoculars, I can see another creature that agrees sitting silently in a tree on the opposite bank. A Bald Eagle prefers fish, but some of those ducks look plump and easy. See it?

I’m reminded of the eagle poem in my e-book GOOSE LAKE. Here’s the prose segment followed by the poem.

ROYALTY

Last night snow wove a thin white sweater. Today is oyster gray. The sun through a peephole is a pale pearl lying cold in the shell. Gusts of starlings blur the air from limb to ground in search of unfrozen water.

An eagle dives from the sky, startling five crows from a hackberry tree. The swan seems not to notice. Geese and ducks continue their aimless drifting and smaller birds carry on with their business.

But all eyes acknowledge the white-headed king that misses nothing from its limb in the hackberry tree.

Streaks down the lake, turns,
swoops back, lands on high limb,
studies the water with baleful stare,

settles to wait, but soon,
bored, changes trees,

quickly disappointed,
swirls into the sky,
soars higher, disappears,

leaves an unexpected
hole in the day
the size of an eagle.

(c) David L. Harrison