I have a silver-furred clan. Grandmas and nephews and cousins twice removed. We keep each other in line and we survive here in the cold reaches of Canada down to Minnesota. We raise pups and talk, howl and roam, and when I twitch my eyebrow at what I hear you say, why, my heart is reverberating in a wild dance with your soul.
Annelinde Metzner June 1992 "Voices of Gaia"
Key Deer I am a solitary being even among my own kind. I step with caution from the mangroves and the hardwood hammocks, expecting the open meadow, finding instead the fast machines on asphalt who run us down so heedlessly. I step carefully and alone through silver palms and mulberry observing without comment the passage of time.
Flower of the grasslands unfurling pink plumes in dry, inch-thin soil. Geum triflorum. The wind blows gently through my sweet feathers. Shamaness, mistress of illusion, shape shifter. I grow in soil but cast a spell of mist, drift like smoke. Now you see me, now you don’t. I’m never where you expect me to be. I may grow into your consciousness when you least expect it, misty flower of the grasslands.
Annelinde Metzner "Voices of Gaia" 1992
Field of prairie smoke
Karner Blue butterfly
Butterfly On the Midwest prairie the bright-spotted Regal Fritillary dines on a banquet of violets. Wild lupines feed the Karner Blue next to a runway at the Saratoga Airport. Bay Area elfins will lay eggs only when the sun is bright and the air calm, succulent sedum nearby. Yes, we are regal, the Butterfly Queens. We richly deserve your admiration. We are finicky and difficult. We require a wild garden paradise. You may keep your dull sameness and live without us.
Annelinde Metzner "Voices of Gaia" 1992
Regal Fritillary
Here are two more from my collection of poems in the voices of endangered species, called "Voice of Gaia" of 1992.
