Hi everyone,
My thanks again to BOB STEPHENS for arranging the reading last night and to NATHAN P. MURPHY himself for hosting the event. I’ve been on stages before but none with the same blue-light ambiance. My thanks to KAREN CRAIGO for taking the picture after she finished her own reading. There were nine Bards there last night so it turned out to be quite a reading.
On other matters, I have talked about how hostile the geese of Goose Lake were when we first moved here in 1989. Here’s a poem from my one and only e-book, Goose Lake, A Year in the Life of a Lake, artfully illustrated by SLADJANA VASIC.
Meeting Our Neighbors
When we moved here in 1989, we were not welcome. As I stooped in the driveway for my first morning paper, a delegation of geese hissing like punctured tires flat-footed it toward me across the grass. This was not a social call. My new house squatting on their land beside their lake was an outrage. Indignant to their pinfeathers the geese closed ranks and delivered their ultimatum in a furious chorus:
Bills hard as chisels,
tails aquiver,
necks recoiling like missile launchers
firing off fierce glares
the posse bristles pigeon-toed
to enforce goose law:
Trespassers
will be hissed
until
they learn their lesson.
The geese of today have taken to different tactics, perhaps influenced by modern society’s penchant for staging demonstrations. Trying to leave my driveway the other day to make an appointment, I was confronted by this attitude of geese.
Begrudgingly, they eventually allowed me to pass. But on my return home a little later, they remaned vigilant.
They’re no longer hissing, but this silent treatment may be worse.
Children's Author David L. Harrison's Blog 