Found

 

 

     

                                                            Photo by L.Joy Burke

 

Found

 

One black leather cell-phone holder

1 blue grocery bag with a buck

fifty in change inside

2 bicycles - 1 by an elm tree in the woods

1 abandoned by the trash fort,

1 pair of pink prescription spectacles

left on the parking lot of the market,

1 owner of a pair of lost pink specs.

 

1 twenty dollar bill in a yard

of an unknown neighbor,

2 illegal green cardboard

turtle firework fountains,

1 palm sized red heart

connected by a white button

to a ragged rectangle of blue felt.

 

1 empty brown nylon backpack

I put it back, 1 Junior ROTC

female’s cover also returned,

1 two inch tall plastic red Elmo,

1 two inch long black saw toothed knife,

2 fist-sized white, stuffed bears -

the first on the sidewalk on the way

to a kin’s funeral – the second

shortly after a car ran over the first.

 

1 large black rubber flashlight.

1 ball peen hammer perched

on the carburetor of my teal Escort,

1 magnetic pointer resting on a

ledge under the hood of

my champagne Legacy,

1 live white Persian kitten

dangling from under the engine

of a white Cadillac Seville,  

paused at a red light in the

midst of a rush filled intersection.

 

4 florescent green tennis balls,

2 smudged autographed baseballs,

1 clear round super ball, it

bounced back into oblivion,

1 catcher’s mitt - I left it

2 red practice jerseys, also left behind,

1 new black Under-Armour cap,

1000 pieces of broken glass.

 

1 blue suede pouch,

1 polished black stone

14 fried chicken bones,

1 soft macramé necklace

1 tattered white, blue and red

“Made in China” American flag,

1 grey and white pet cat –

Blithe.

 

1 fledgling blue jay

stayed for 4 days

ate from my hand

remembered how to preen

how to forage, how

to perch and how to 

squak "set me free."

 

Time.

 

July 16, 2008

Revised August 17, 2008

 

All Rights Reserved by Linda Joy Burke.

 

 

Tags: Found Things

Waiting for the Dawn

                 

Photos by Linda Joy Burke

These days I wake just after dawn, my happy dog eager to get on with the new day, in pre bark mode, she paws my arm, licks my nose, growls her request that I finish with my rest. She takes no heed to my protesting that I was never a morning person. She doesn't care that I'm used to staying up til the wee hours with the best of the world weary.  She doesn't care if I think I'm more profound writing alone in the middle of the night.

I have learned to love the clean slate of dawn as much as the deep stillness in the middle of the night.  I love the smell of a new day's air, before the transports start to role and people with their mindless urgencies spill out into the world, love hearing the delighted songs of birds calling their mates, love the sights of a wild fox slipping in and out of the cover of the underbrush, or a hawk hunting prey, love how my dog finds pleasure in every scent that she encounters even the stuff I find gross, love how she requires play, her bursts of exuberant energy so fundamentally joyful that whatever weakness I feel towards rising so early is transformed.

Transformation isn't always what it's cracked up to be though, you never know when you'll walk past the neighborhood middle school to see the latest graffiti -

I've never seen such admiration for a common garden tool coming from a contemporary suburban kid, makes you wonder what they're learning in that school.

                     

 

This is a photo taken in a drug free school zone. Actually this photo is from the grounds of the middle school, and the vodka and Jim Beam bottles have been in this same spot for months. I really do wonder what kids are learning these days about doing the right thing, instead of taking the easy way to the end result, just getting by on the least effort, or complaining that folks don't care anymore.

The impact of  the trashing of their environment has to have some profound long term affect on how they perceive the earth's value. In the blocks around this drug free school zone there are broken Heineken bottles littering the sidewalks and bike paths on the way to the schools, empty forties strewn in the woods, hard liquor bottles left in the fenced in area around the school's heating system.

Tiny plastic bags dot the football field and cases of Budweiser and Coors cans pile up in the surrounding woods. One day while I was walking my dog, I saw a guy picking up cans. I went up to him to thank him for picking up litter in the neighborhood. He told me he wasn't picking up litter, just the cans, he could sell the aluminum for money. I told him that I often picked up trash and recycled the cans and bottles.

I guess I was proud of my service to the community and was bragging a bit. He wasn't impressed though, instead he told me to leave the cans on the ground, so that he could collect them. I don't.  Then he told me how bad the neighborhood was, showed me a bowie knife that he had securely fastened to his belt, told me to read PS (a local free adzine) then I'd see how bad it was here where I lived,  alluded to the fact that he'd been threatened, said I should watch my back.

                         

 

 

 

All Rights Reserved by Author

                                  

 

 

 

Tidal Wave

 

In the spring

I thought I knew everything

there was to know about

how earth loved sky.

 

I dreamed of living near an ocean beach

where I’d watch lapis waves caress

pristine shores.

 

My electronic reality

no longer a necessity,

 

my simple life spent dusting off

my pen, exercising my hand, finding  my

way back to my heart’s work.

 

My life fluid with poems sprouting

like nature’s seedlings, destined

to love the sky.

 

Her verdant energy

tested beyond

comprehension.

 

Nature’s imbalance erased

dreams once come true.

 

Inside earth’s womb

seedlings destined to love the sky wait.

I learn the patience of winter.

                                                 

               

 

Linda Joy Burke

 2007 All Rights Reserved by author.

Departure

 

 

The day after I posted the last vulture poem,

this group appeared in front of my house. These were from a different group, and were easily frightened by my attempts to photograph them. The bird on the rail glared at me for an intense couple of seconds before flying off with the rest of the group, to temporarily roost in the trees.

Tags: Howard County, Vultures

My New Neighbors Have Moved On

 

In The Spirit

 

 

 

Christmas on This Side of the Shinig Sea

I sit on this side of the shining sea, watching the wretched path of the resolute vultures, now roosting within spitting distance of the front door. A cycle of seasons has changed so much in this part of the world. A ride in the country exposes how little has been left pristine.  Immune to wistful threats of death by arrow, seduced by man made waste, left in haste by the unconcerned masses,  future generations of wild birds gone soft now runt and roost.

In other neighborhoods, silent nights are set aglow in rainbow lights, the innocent young embark on toy driven fantasy journeys, grown-ups who know love, cuddle in serene slumbers,  and the lonely mourn those who've left too soon.

Morning brings the afterglow of Christmas rapture, the stories we told each other with love and laughter, light the way for new memories to grow.

Linda Joy Burke

All Rights Reserved by Author

A couple of weeks ago some one stole the iron gate from the entrance to  the Notre Dame School in Baltimore. The nuns are heart sick that a historic symbol was snatched away. Years of tradition were wiped out in a moment of desperation.

Yesterday someone stole a 400 pound clock from St. David's Catholic Church, also located in Baltimore. One of the priests from the church has declared that though this is a tragedy, that there are so many more awful things to attend to in the city.

I grew up in the Catholic Church with a kind of sheltered belief, that no harm could come to those "sacred places." We have gone so far away from those days of innocence, moved into the time of surveillance, survival of the fittest overshadows the world of the meek.