White
Pelicans
Floating then clapping from flapping
Black
Cormorants
Diving then running and sunning
White
Pelicans
Floating then clapping from flapping
Black
Cormorants
Diving then running and sunning
into stiff wind
two pelicans labor
toward sunset
After posting this, I had a recollection of writing something else about Pelicans so I did a search, on my own blog. Considering it is 4/14, at this moment, despite what the time stamp stays on this blog entry,.. it was exactly one year ago today, that I posted something very similar to this. What an interesting coincidence! Life’s patterns. I was on the Snake River canyon rim in 2012 observing the pelicans. The Pelicans referred to above, in 2013, were above the Snake River, but in Burley. My imagination tells me they are all on their way to Niagra Springs.
into driving spalshing waves of wind
frosty rim dancing pelicans
undulate at sunset
If yearning could be measured in wingspan
it would be this cluster of birds, draped
in cumulus white under a grey cover
of drizzle sky that could only be Montana
in June. And an impossible current
that masks the rich world beneath
this floating island of feathers.
What is it about these twenty birds
that brings the word vulnerability
to the lips? The way dim sunlight
filters orange through their thin bills
I trust entirely in crossing over.
Maybe I haven’t been awake
until this instant. Or spent enough
time alone in the cold, spring mud
in genuflection of flight.
Maybe today I’ll learn
what it means to be alive,
finally surrounded, in the middle
of everything all at once.
Stephen J. Lyons Twitter Feed
(at least I think it’s the same guy)