A Long Time Ago

My new puppy. Here I am a long time ago in Columbia, Mo.  The pup was the color of a penny and so her name was Penny.  What a sweet little dog she was.
We knew a family that raised cocker spaniels and so that is where we bought her.  My father knew a lot about training animals and he showed me how to work with her.  I used to walk her on a leash to the drug store where I would buy an ice cream cone for both of us. I loved to spoil my dog.  I took her for rides in my bike basket.

Watercolor

Such joy between sweetwater and sand.

Blue Footed Boobies

We have encountered boobies twice: on Little Cayman Island and on the Galapagos Islands.

On Little Cayman we could walk to the booby hatch.  This was the place where the boobies had a commune of sorts.  They were nesting in trees that stood in brackish water and they brought back fish they had caught in the sea in for their young.  We watched from shore as they dived into the sea and brought up fish.  They stored them in their gullets to bring back to their nests and if they were lucky they would not be attacked by the man of war or frigate birds that forced them to cough up their catch.  It was on Little Cayman that I learned the real meanings of “boobie hatch” and “cough it up” and the meaning of booby.

The same sort of thing was happening on the Galapagos Islands only a different sort of booby had evolved in these islands.  They had blue feet.  And we were fortunate to arrive during mating season.  The male would do a dance to impress the female lifting his beautiful blue feet to impress her.  This was so amazing that many years later I have made some watercolors of this event.

Shortly after we came home from the Galapagos, someone commissioned a series of Galapagos poems for a website that is no longer available so I have these in my book, The Wilderness Within.

Why Do Birds Sing at Daybreak?

Why Do Birds Sing at Daybreak?

Robins with their marmalade voices

Caucuses of crows

And mourning doves loving the morning sun—

Humming birds never humble in spite

of their size chirp and hum as they fly.

Warblers warble and catbirds crumble

All the songs they ever heard together

Sweet crumbs of song

tumble through rose colored skies.

Then sleepy at evening a robin sings

Its sweet bedtime song.

But most of all

Birds sing at sunrise?

Why?

--Barbara Spring

Canoe Trip Down the White River

The White River writhes

past islands thick with green ferns 
and wild birds sing

A green shypoke flies--

The serpentine river flows

curls and swirls below. 

The river burbles

over bright sandy shallows

murmurs over snags.

Red paddles steer past

fallen trees that could tip them--

the White River sings.

                     --Barbara Spring

                                  

Barnes & Noble and Amazon have all of my Books

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/barbara-spring Barnes & Noble has my books: The Dynamic Great Lakes a critically acclaimed book about changes in the Great Lakes of North America; The Wilderness Within, a book of poetry and essays; Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below.

Between Sweetwater and Sand is a book of love poems for Planet Earth and her living tapestries of plants, birds, fish and animals that live on sands, forests, in airstreams and living waters.

Barbara Spring lives on the shoreline of Lake Michigan.  She has published articles and poems in numerous newspapers and magazines and on the www.  She taught poetry to gifted children and taught writing classes and liberal studies at Grand Valley State University. 

Her published books include: The Dynamic Great Lakes, a critically acclaimed a non-fiction book about changes in the Great Lakes; The Wilderness Within, a book of poems and essays about wild places; and Sophia’s Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below. This book celebrates wisdom and mourns the times when Sophia is lost.  

My books are also available on Amazon.com:

 http://www.amazon.com/Barbara-Spring/e/B002PI5IQQ  Here is a link to my books and a couple of my videos.

Excerpted from Between Sweetwater and Sand

Peasant Dance by Pieter Breugel

Birds of Paradise

Birds of paradise dance

to impress the opposite sex something like

Pieter Breughel’s “Peasant Dance.”

The men folk dance

kick legs in the air—their very large feet.

Sturdy men display their colors: red, black, white

(one wears a long black sword)

a small curved horn on the ground.

Village square? Tropical jungle?

A bird of paradise makes strange sounds--

the bag piper with his cheeks puffed out

squeezes out weird music for the dance.

Hands reach out toward each other.

They want. They want. They all want something.

A woman with a red purse hands

bread to a child.

A man and a woman kiss on the lips--

earthen jugs passed around.

They dance. They dance.


http://www.amazon.com/Barbara-Spring/e/B002PI5IQQ

My New Book of Poems

This is a book of poetry. It is now available 2013 on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and other fine bookstores.

Between Sweetwater and Sand is a book of love poems for Planet Earth and her living tapestries of plants, birds, fish and animals that live on sands, forests, in airstreams and living waters.

Barbara Spring lives on the shoreline of Lake Michigan.  She has published articles and poems in numerous newspapers and magazines and on the www.  She taught poetry to gifted children and taught writing classes and liberal studies at Grand Valley State University. 

Her published books include: The Dynamic Great Lakes, a critically acclaimed a non-fiction book about changes in the Great Lakes; The Wilderness Within, a book of poems and essays about wild places; and Sophia’s Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below. This book celebrates wisdom and mourns the times when Sophia is lost.