Category: Nature Photography

  • The Verge of Autumn

    The Verge of Autumn

    The woods have learned a quieter gold today. The green still clings, but yields along the bough, And every leaf that loosens from its stay Is writing what the year will allow. A stream goes talking over broken stone, Clear as a thought the mind has not yet named. It takes the sky, the leaf,…

  • The Hawk at the Clearing

    The Hawk at the Clearing

    The pines are holding in their breath; the mist still kneels in silver rows. He keeps the morning folded close, one dark, unhurried, listening rose. The cere is gold, a small exact sun set over law the first wind wrote. Each feather laid like shield on shield, a living psalm the forest wrote. No sermon…

  • The Quiet Spit

    The Quiet Spit

    The harbor wears its Sunday blue, A bowl of light the wind runs through, And every little silver crease Goes walking by, then finds its peace. A green head rises, spruce-crowned, slow, From rock the color of old snow Turned granite-gray with lichen script, A psalm the centuries have lipped. The trees lean out like…

  • A Journey Through Light and Tide in Verse

    A Journey Through Light and Tide in Verse

    I. Arrival I came down late to see the summer out,Down where the lake lets go its held-in light,The path still warm, the goldenrod devout,The air a psalm the pines had learned of night. II. The Watch I took my place upon the cooling stoneAnd watched a single sail refuse the night,As if the hour…

  • Low Tide at Dusk

    Low Tide at Dusk

    The tide has drawn its long gray hem awayAnd left the flats in glistening disarray,A field of stone and kelp, of tidal glass,Where minnows in the shallow rivers pass.The sun has slipped behind the wooded ridge;Its embers linger, molten at the edge,And spill in copper down the polished bayTo gild the ribs of sand where…

  • A Morning Visitor

    A Morning Visitor

    He came the way good news arrives,Not sent for, and without a fuss,The gentleman of little lives,Making a doorframe out of us.His crest was up. His eye was in.He held the branch as one who ownsNo more than what a bird has been:A weight of feathers, breath, and bones.I would have paid him if I…

  • The Still Hour

    The Still Hour

    I came down early where the tide had beenAnd found the stones set shining in a row,As if the sea, in drawing out again,Had washed them for a reason I should know.The pines stood back the way that pines will standWhen evening puts a question to the shore,And what the water gave the waiting landWas…

  • Morning on the Rocky Shore

    Morning on the Rocky Shore

    Where sunlit waters silver-spill,The pines stand watch upon the hill;The tumbled stones in quiet lay,And greet the hush of breaking day.The tide draws in with gentle hand,To smooth the edges of the land;While spruce and fern, in seaward air,Breathe out a psalm as soft as prayer.O sea, O stone, O steadfast tree,You keep the Maker’s…

  • Between the Hills

    Between the Hills

    Two green shoulders stoop to drink the lake,And in that stillness, heaven stirs awake,Clouds unhurried, psalm-like, drift and passAbove the water’s slow, unshattered glass.Silence here has learned the tongue of light,The far shore dissolving, tender, into white;And something more than summer lingers near,A door left open in the quiet air.

  • The Sea at Sunset

    The Sea at Sunset

    The sun descends and sets the tide aflame,As if the deep remembered God by name.Each wave that breaks rehearses our own breath,A brief ascent, a bowing down to death.The gold dissolves; the horizon drinks the light;Creation sighs, and hands the day to night.Yet still the sea, unmastered and unmade,Keeps time with One whose glory does…

  • The Sanderling’s Grace

    The Sanderling’s Grace

    Along the silvered edge of tide,Where restless waters meet the shore,A sanderling on stilted strideAttends the sea’s unhurried lore.His feathered mantle, ash and snow,A cloak of cloud upon the swell;He bends where shallow ripples flowAnd gleans what humble tides foretell.No hurried thought disturbs the air,He keeps a slower, older creed:To walk the margin, stoop, and…