Mother Nature's Math
The most marvelous of all operations I know
is Mother Nature's choice of who will die or grow.
Why is it I love butterfly, sucking nectar from my flower
When I hate the worm it was and snip it from my bower?
Who are we to decide what's good or bad on Earth?
By asking Mother Nature,
we will know what each is worth.*
A friend fed poison to the neighborhood kitty
For killing a downy woodpecker, she thought so pretty;
Yet woodpeckers destroy the wood on my house,
And a world without cats would be full of rat and mouse.
Baby birds in our backyard fall out of their trees,
Right into the open mouth of my kitty to please:
They're so dumb, they nest again,
Robotically laying eggs like a domestic hen.
Sometimes I yell and catch the baby,
Who's in total shock, a borderline "maybe."
The baby usually dies as, sadly, I lower my arm;
But don't we do the same raising chickens on a farm?
Amazing to me is how bird parents must feel:
The whole clan arrives to prevent baby's being a meal.
The parents risk their lives
to feed and protect their brood,
Yet once lost, within 15 minutes,
the female is being wooed.
* * * * * * *
* Job 12:8, The Bible:
"But now ask the beasts and let them teach you;
And the birds of the heavens, and let them tell you.
Or speak to the earth, and let it teach you;
And let the fish of the sea declare to you.
Who among all these does not know
that the hand of the Lord has done this,
in whose hand is the life of every living thing,
and the breath of all mankind?"
The above poem, written in Overland Park, Kansas,
was selected in the North American Open Poetry Contest
for The Isle of View anthology
by The National Library of Poetry for 1996.
(One of Florida's magnificent butterflies)
Monarchs and Mother Nature
As I drove the ridge to post office hill,
My eyes were amazed at a sight to thrill:
Monarchs cluttered throughout the sky,
Flittering and fluttering, passing me by.
Their efforts seemed indirect, feeble and frail,
Yet totally persistent they followed "The Trail."
It seemed they were headed toward Santa Fe,
As did animals and Indians in an ancient day.
In only five minutes, as I drove the crest,
I guessed at a thousand without a rest,
Flying onward toward their grandparents' home,
Even though their parents had farther roamed.
How can anyone study the sky of Fall.
And not believe Holy Spirit is Mother of All.
She tells her children when to go forth,
Sending them South from the chilling North.
She counts each one that falls from the path,
And ultimately knows all Destiny's math.
The amazing truth is Her Balance in the end,
As Her breath blows them along on the wind.
The above poem, written in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, September 17, 1996,
was selected by Sparrowgrass Poetry Forum for the anthology,
Poetic Voices of America.
PLANTING RED TULIPS in HOPE of SPRING
October 14, 1999
This morning while planting red tulips for Spring,
A rose thorn stuck my hand with a sting.
I squeezed my finger to produce a blood drop,
Then wiped it on the rock to make it stop.
As I saw the red streak gleaming on the stone
Like the basics of primal life, blood and bone,
An amazing thought struck me with awe,
And I crouched motionless at what I saw.
This streak of RED bearing DNA and genes,
Has flowed on the Earth through many scenes,
Since Adam and Eve were created by God,
Through their offspring who upon Earth have trod.
Adam means RED and so his blood began
The line of descent that became upright man.
And here I crouched beside the round rock,
Seeing proof of life moving forward with the clock.
LITTLE PEOPLE
February 26, 2000
Little People are closer to God
Because they're only a few inches above sod.
My one-year grandson is down in the grass with me
When I weed, hoe, plant seeds, studying the soil I see.
Perhaps this is why I have a child-like mind,
Which marvels at new discoveries I find.
I like to be close to Mother Earth's breast,
To observe how intricately she is dressed.
Each shoot, stem, clump, rock and bug I touch
Keeps me in rhythm with Her, whom God loves so much.
This poem was written when Sylvia lived in Kansas.
THOUGHTS on GARDENING
March 16, 1999
'Twas unseasonably warm, a day before Spring,
I worked my garden, with faith, to bring
Design to my backyard where cardinals sing.
The other winter color has been bluejay's wing.
Winter is gray and brown - dead, you know:
Only at Christmas do lights color the snow.
Today, soil is crumbly and ready to hoe.
Tiny green points are beginning to grow.
Woodpeckers made Swiss cheese of our abode,
So we hung a big-eyed owl from the gutter, to gode
Those fiery-headed flitters to another mother-load,
Or else we'll have woodpecker pie ala mode.
I dropped old biscuits on the black wire cart:
Winter birds' buffet serving frigid, frozen tarts.
My pair-o-dachs look up to me: They're so smart;
They know they'll get a morsel from a softie at heart.
Two new statues now grace our yard -
A lop-earred bunny rabbit, cold and hard,
And a red dachshund icon, standing guard.
Our dogs checked its privates,
then issued their "business card."
Heidi has a job about which she's firm:
It's her responsibility to rid the soil of "worm."
Pushing dirt with her nose, she sniffs for a squirm,
But I keep secret how many worms in my berm.
She finds a worm and with joy awakes,
Curling back her lips, her head she shakes,
So lips stay clean; Away she takes
The worm, one less, good earth to make.
Harley just sits and soaks up sun.
He'd like to dig - his greatest fun,
But I forbade it, so his work was done;
He rolls on his back and sits on his bun.
GARDEN of EDEN
March 20, 1998
Mother Eve wanted to see like God,
With His eyes of wisdom, to be like God.
The Serpent said, "Right! That fruit is 'The Big Why,'
But God lied to you - you surely won't die."
Eve ate the apple to consume the mind of Creator,
To decide what to make and even do it greater,
But God would not let His "created" upstage Him
Anymore than He let Lucifer overthrow Him.
So, He expelled First Couple from their lofty place of rank:
Now, with the power of creation, into Earth they sank.
Humans could create life by the will of their lust,
But God set a time-limit and they turned into dust.
Man and woman twist God's divine creative power
And that's why He created year, month and hour,
To limit man's stranglehold on His Almighty Majesty,
The outcome of the Garden of Eden decision travesty.
The photograph is of Sylvia's painted picket-fence
artwork in Florida where she lived 2003-2006.
CHAFF in the WIND
September 30, 1999
Today I harvested my zinnina seed,
Grown tall and bright after removing the weed.
Sitting in Fall sunshine by a pile of sand,
I ground brittle petals between each hand
To separate dead refuse from vital kernel,
Like stories of strange ventures in my journal,
Where certain events put people into dischord,
Yet the outcome always brings us closer to the Lord,
As worthless chaff is blown away,
By Holy Spirit's breath in her loving way.
When I open my hand, exposing seed and crust,
The gentle breeze carries the chaff back to dust,
Letting the meatier kernel fall onto my tray
To be planted as a brand new flower some day.
And so it is with the things that are true:
They're heavier than falsehood, and meatier, too.
Fashion, religion, peer pressure and fad
Are worthless chaff with nothing to add
To Earth's success in the role of evolution.
It's the kernel of FAITH that carries the solution
To life's evolving on the upward scale.
Peer-conscious sheep are the ones who fail:
When one jumps off, the others follow
Down the wide path in the dangerous hollow.
Only the one who knows the truth well,
Having absorbed it through his every cell,
Can weigh its wisdom "this way and that,"
To evolve a better plan than where the world's at.
Thus as the chaff is blown away as dust,
The kernel falls back upon Earth's crust,
With a brand new set of instructions inside,
To become next generation, so life will abide.
FADED FLOWERS
August 26, 1995
If flowers had eyes, they could see themselves fade,
From youthful days of sunshine to autumn's lost shade.
The choices they have are - to wilt into the ground,
Or be dried-up memories when turned upside-down.
My 30-year-old son came by, then had to go:
As we passed by a mirror, I thought, "Whoah!"
"Who is that old woman standing by my son?"
Twenty years had passed away, "Whew!" I was stunned!
Time flashed before my eyes in the time-warp mirror:
Looking at a sagging face, I began to fear her.
Six months ago, I found a hair on my chin,
And those "highlights" are the gray hairs coming in.
So what's life for, when our destiny is the sod?
Were we really created in the image of God?
When I was thirty, I looked okay,
But today at fifty, God's image? "No way!"
The truth is this: We were put here as a test:
The flesh is the first part, but the spirit is the rest.
The flesh we can shake, shape, color and fake,
But the Spirit is REAL - in Eternity we will wake.
When your flesh drops off your bones,
And ceases to be, with dying groans,
Will your Spirit flow into Heaven's Stream
When you wake from this mortal dream?
RED CLAY and YELLOW ROSE
October 16, 2000
At my grandparents' house in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee
Was a summer and winter adventure for Brother Joe and me.
Living in Tampa, Florida, in bamboo and sand we'd play
'Til at our mother's parents' home on Southern red clay.
For two weeks in advance, at bedtime we would talk,
Wondering if we'd see snow as white as chalk.
When we were supposed to be sound asleep,
We planned things we'd build if snow fell deep.
If the trip were for Christmas, Grandpa took us to his farm
To cut a cedar Christmas Tree with his sturdy Scottish arm.
Fresh smell of cedar draped with popped corn from the kitchen,
Grandma with colored cloth scraps, a quilt was always stitchin.'
Grandpa's glass dish, full of gelatin candy orange slice,
Was one of the things by which I was ever enticed:
Somehow, Mother always knew when I tried to lift the lid,
"Sylvia, put that down!" she commanded her hungry kid.
A Rite of Passage is memorable, in 1955, when,
On Christmas Day at the plump age of ten,
I became a woman, which Mother had figured was near.
The smell of Grandma's daily cornbread in the iron skillet, baking,
Her garden tomatoes, corn and green beans, our appetite was making.
Concord grapes she strained through cheesecloth
to make her jelly,
When spread on biscuits, with sausage and eggs,
made a happy belly.
What an adventure to go alone
into Grandma's summer garden to play;
Dwarfed by cornstalks,
my feet twisted over furrows of rock-hard clay;
Chased by the local grapevine wasp
whose job was eating bugs,
Heavy grape clusters hung on wires by tendrils tight and snug.
When I was only three, before my brother was born,
Grandma had chickens, to whom she threw some corn.
Those feathered giants were dinosaurs who wanted me to eat
As I followed Grandma to get wood
from the cookstove to heat.
Somewhere "out back' was an old mule
in a crumbling wood shed,
Emerging from a patchy weed-and-flower bed.
The dark shed and mule for me held great mystery
As they soon became part of long bygone history.
One day, Daddy borrowed Grandpa's overalls and hat
To go into the country where the Mennonites sat.
We thought Daddy, a doctor, looked quite "out of place,"
But he was determined to study the black-garbed "race."
None of my begging carried one ounce of weight,
So at the lace-curtained window I had to sit and wait,
And wonder at the strange 'dark' people 200 years behind:
What kind of stories would Daddy witness and find?
From down the brick block came the horses' clippety-clop
Slowing the buckboard wagon at our corner to stop.
Invisible women wearing plain, long black dresses
With black prairie bonnets to hide face and tresses.
Expressionless black-hatted men behind shaggy beards,
Against Nature's green, cut a silhouette, foreign and weird.
Their separate religion said, "Modern Machinery is a Sin."
How would this lifestyle any souls ever win?
Perhaps they were right about the black-and-white TV box:
Even demure Grandma "glued to the tube" for soap operas and locks
Of Gorgeous George, the "hunky" bonde wrestling wonder,
Who made himself as big as Lightning-and-Thunder.
I remember one unbearable summer night, hot as a torch:
At 104-degrees, we took our mattresses to sleep on the porch.
Bugs biting and screeching so loud and high
Our efforts to sleep were a long, miserable sigh.
Green-horn Daddy on Grandpa's farm with borrowed rifle,
Took Brother and me for target practice, not a mere trifle,
When he said, "Joe, go out and throw up the tin can."
With left eye closed, I drew a bead on the pan,
Making sure the trajectory was the way I figured,
Before I made the split-second decision to squeeze the trigger.
"Now!" was the moment I told my finger, "Pull!"
To my horror, the bead was on Joe's face in full.
Thank God, I didn't pull the trigger!
Our grandparents' Tennessee yard smelled
so different from ours:
Wild onions, fuzzy grass, shade trees,
sights and smells one devours.
On the west side of Grandpa's garage,
with mildew and dust inside,
Was the most wonderful aroma I'd ever felt,
my soul from body to divide,
Grandma's cup-size BUTTER-yellow ROSE!
The KITTY with NO NAME
April 2, 1996
On the First of April, around the world news
Came the awesome story of Five Kitten "mews."
Cold-hearted humans, who don't have the clues,
Saw a feline mother, willing her life to lose.
A blazing orange night, would she walk into the flame?
Bear the pain upon herself as for her kits she came.
Each time in, and each time out, her body grew more lame,
Until all five were rescued by the kitty-with-No-Name.
The world on April One saw her holocaust in New York
And heard the astounding tale of the Mama Kitty's work:
How she ran into the flames, like revolving, spitted pork,
Roasted more each time she came to save gifts of the stork.
"Children are a gift of God," so the Proverb goes:
Kitty Mama saved her clan and touched them with her nose.
Her eyes were blind, with melted toes, their lives became her woes,
Yet to assure their safe escape, out of the fire, she arose.
Safe at last in human care, her pain could make one gnaw,
Yet her first thought, with no sight left,
she reached out with her paw.
She had to know if all were well:
The touch of melted claw would tell.
Flesh was raw on fire-burnt Maw,
But selfless love was her law.
The calico Cat-of-Many Colors had a kitten of each hue;
One was black, one was gray and a white like me-and-you.
Did she represent the world with its colorful human stew?
"Now that her sacrifice is done, what will our Creator do?"
What are children worth today, a fact we try to dodge.
What's our excuse before our God
when Mama Kitty stands as judge?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The sacrificial mother cat was named "Scarlet" by the veterinary clinic who restored her to health, yet forever maimed with face and paws that melted from the flames. A single woman, whose letter won the contest of the one most suited to give "Scarlet" unconditional motherly love, adopted the Kitty-with-No-Name.
PREDATOR and PREY on a WINTER DAY
March 3, 2000
As I sat down to my computer, a poem to begin,
With rhythm and rhyme ready, I picked up my pen:
"Lord, fill me with Your Spirit and give me Your thought,"
This is my request as God's guidance is sought.
Only a minute later, at the kitchen window came a knock,
As if someone had thrown a large, but rather soft rock.
Looking out my small window, I saw a large bird,
Flying away to an apple tree. This is what I'd heard.
Engaged in writing my daily poem, I only gave a glance,
And noticed that the large gray bird was shifting his stance,
Rearranging his tail-feathers after running into the glass.
Quickly, I grabbed my binoculars to study his shape and mass.
'Twas larger than a crow, with gray head and white breast,
A regal fowl, sitting tall in the tree on my hill crest.
When he turned his head, I saw his prairie falcon beak.
This was a serious predator, little song birds to seek.
Out of the corner of my eye, I breathed a sigh, "Oh, no."
Agnus had a tiny gray junco, flipping her high and low.
Since coming to our house, a starving cat on Christmas Day,
Ever so slowly, inch-by-inch, we tamed Agnus to stay.
But she is now so fat and full, she has no taste for fowl,
Still, her predator's eye takes delight in the prowl.
Agnus hides behind the wall, her eyes the patio search,
Watching birds eating, then jumping to make them lurch.
Full of a Kitty Krispie lunch,
Agnus holds her predator's punch,
Jumping just to scare the bunch
Of busy birds with grain to munch.
What a coincidence before me was set:
Two predators and one tiny bird had met.
What must have happened? I don't know,
But I'm sure sorry I missed the show.
The falcon must have swooped under the tree
To grab the tiny bird, while Agnus he did not see.
I bet, when they met mid-air both were shocked,
And the tiny bird from his claws came unlocked.
This gave Agnus the chance to nab it,
Which this time she must have reached out to grab it.
I couldn't blame Agnus for giving the bird a toss,
'Cause 30 minutes earlier I'd let her play the boss,
Batting around a "pretend" paper bird on a string.
Now, she had the real thing with feathers on the wing.
When the falcon figured Agnus had made her kill,
He flew out of the apple tree and down over the hill.
When I reached down to snatch the bird,
before she bit a crunch,
Wings tried to fly and her tail came out in one bunch.
"Oh, Lord!" in deep remorse for the tiny bird I cried.
"Now she's as good as dead," I sorrowed and sighed.
Cupping her into my hands, I saw no blood on her,
But how could she fly to escape without her rudder?
As we looked eye-to-eye, I said, "If you'd just die,
Then I could bury you and in Mother Earth you'd lie."
The tiny, gray junco closed her eyes,
As I began to walk, think and surmise,
What I should do before the day is through,
As the sun sets with colors of the rainbow's hue.
Thinking she had died, I began to look for a spot
To make her tiny grave, no bigger than a dot,
But her body was warm against my hand.
With a periodic shiver, she made her stand.
So I walked to the house to bring her inside:
I placed her in a basket and began to provide
Pine needles, juniper, moss and seed,
But in a few moments, she was ready to be freed.
When I lifted the lid to add some straw,
She flew up and away to the first thing she saw.
Back and forth in the basement, she flew in midair,
Until I trapped her in a towel with gentle, loving care.
Speaking softly as I took the next gamble,
I placed my tiny lady bird in an overgrown bramble.
Perfectly camoflauged - gray bird in gray shrub,
I left her a tiny saucer of bird-seed grub.
Saying to the little bird before I walked away,
"I know you were to have been a meal
for the bigger bird today,
But I couldn't stand to see you being tormented by my cat,
And falcon goes hungry, unless he finds a rat."
Most birds mate for love and life:
I wonder if she was somebody's wife.
It's up to God to bring them together,
To find each other by song and feather.
As the sun set 'midst the colors of lavender, aqua and peach,
Bending down, to study a clump of yellow daffodils, I reached
For Agnus, who was now feeling friskie,
running and having fun,
As the final moment of daylight passed away with the sun.
In the house, preparing dinner, I manipulated the meat,
Which once was a big-eyed animal, sensitive and sweet.
But now in my kitchen, it doesn't have a face,
Which is how the predator can eat it: Is this God's grace?
I wonder how genocidal "Ethnic Cleansing" goes:
Hitler killed the Jews 'cause he didn't like their nose.
Bosnia, Croatians, Kurds and Serbs,
"To Kill and to Torture" are two human-beast verbs.
Last night, I watched a program on Angola Prison,
Outside New Orleans, as American crime has risen.
A young man on death-row was interviewed before
He paid with his life and passed through death's door.
The warden was a "man of God"
whose Christian life was sound:
Before he took life-for-life, he led a prayer out loud,
Asking for forgiveness for the killers and the killed,
Saying, "We all must die at some point" - our heart be stilled.
The warden did his best to see each man made peace with God
Through the Blood of the Saviour, his Mercy more than Rod.
"Forgiveness is what life's all about" is what the warden said.
The murderer's last word was, "Wow..."
as he died upon the bed.
WASHED AWAY in ONLY a DAY!
Experiencing The Kansas City Flood
of October 4, 1998
written November 6, 1999
"This is Paradise!
Thank you for placing me here," to God I would talk
Every day for 24 years when I came home from my walk.
After The Flood of 1998 that washed us away,
The land was cleared and changed in only one day.
Never again can one imagine once-upon-a-time where
I lived at 7101 Grandview with floor, roof and stair.
Now, looking at my garden albums' beautiful pages
Makes me wonder about that time and place of bygone ages:
The beauty of our home was a reality I could feel,
But now, I wonder if it was in the Spirit or actually real.
So, maybe, if we ponder the heaven to which we'll go,
It's only another time or place on Earth that we don't know.
(Sylvia's postcards are of her life at 7101 Grandview which is now a park.)
