Wahey to the delightful distraction of dabbling ducks.

Today in Wetland Geometry: An A-coot Angle.

#SilentSunday

"Somebody's in there.
Somebody's sealed himself up
in this round room,
this hassock upholstered in rind,
this padded cell.
He believes if nothing unbinds him
he'll live forever.

Like our frst room
it is dark and crowded.
Hunger knows no tongue
to tell it.
Water is glad there.
In this room with two navels
somebody wants to be born again.

So I unlock the pumpkin.
I carve out the lid
from which the stem raises
a dry handle on a damp world.
Lifting, I pull away
wet webs, vines on which hang
the fat tears of the pumpkin,

like fingernails or the currency
of bats. How the seeds shine,
as if water had put out
hundreds of lanterns. Hundreds of eyes in the windless wood
gaze peacefully past me,
hacking the thickets,

and now a white dew beads the blade.
Has the saint surrendered
himself to his beard?
Has his beard taken root in his cell?

Saint Pumpkin, pray for me, because when I looked for you, I found nothing, because unsealed and unkempt, your tomb rots,
because I gave you a false face and a light of my own making."

--Nancy Willard, "Saint Pumpkin"

"Librarians went unarmed on this world, as far as conventional weapons were concerned. Valentina didn't fear knives, bullets, fire. But their words--words that carried semiotic contamination and semantic toxins--those she couldn't afford to underestimate."

--Yoon Ha Lee, "Code and Codex" #AmReading

Typed "ghost birds" in my photo search on a whim and pulled the first several results together:

Ghostwatching. :Blobhaj_Ghostie_Surprise: :Blobhaj_Pumpkin_Face:
#Caturday

Walking the old right of way. #FootpathFriday #Trains

Knit myself a little friend today.

I love the morning light in autumn--like spot-and footlights warming to the stage and all her players.

Tbh, this is how I mostly capture kinglets--just little Dickinsonian blurs of furtive hopes and freedoms.

#MonochromeMonday

Birds Masquerading as Foliage, part three: American Robin

Birds Masquerading as Foliage, part two: "Lincoln's" Sparrow

Birds Masquerading as Foliage, part one: Ruby-crowned Kinglet

I was surprised by the most amazing pop-up vaudeville act when I opened the back curtains this morning! #quorb

They also shovel, who only shovel rain.

Snufkin hibernating in his little den by the heating vent. #Caturday

"Common" mergansers.