praying mantis in the doorway.

praying mantis and me by matt.


this is the first time in years i've seen a praying mantis. and right at mister's door. 

the swamp was singing.

arthur the border collie comes by rescue from nebraska. his human died and he was found starving. he had never been out of the country, never in collar and leash, never in the city. he's usually very shy with others but he went directly to mister. here's to arthur adapting beautifully to a life grown complicated.

one of the birders in the new group says he's a happy dog and that reflects on me and i feel proud and happy too.

mister finds a new bird group and it is good and the old bird group comes and mister luxuriates in the overlapping attention of two bird groups and he's gone to heaven. i too feel the bliss of the petting connection as though mister continues my body. i find the bird people intelligent and sensitive. i believe they are imbued with and continue the genius of birds.

copp sits quietly with karin for a long spell and i walk around the garden and over the moon bridge.

when he notices i'm gone he starts looking for me. i whistle across the pond.

hello little witch! we learned this fire-eyed bird is a night bird and in columbia she's called the little witch. i love this soul sweet little witchy bird. also known as the black-crowned heron.

 how does it feel to be back on the island with the birders, mister?

 how does it feel?

words can describe, but they can't explain this feeling.

it's a sacred thing.

i hear that impermanence is a wonderful thing.

often it goes to a different place. you may see something, begin to write, and suddenly are in a different place. you think you have something to say and the narrative gets away. the narrative is a ghost story. you follow, noticing things you did not intend. as you lose your way you see that the story is unfolding in it's own way and you are in it, observing and telling what you see. you are the missing narrator. the story is missing, drawing you on, missing you.

it was an intense day. i guess all the days are intense. i talked with a friend who said we have to do something with the stress. it wasn't about us individually she spoke about the community. we talked about the shill hairstone and the obomba land grab scam and how we can't even manage to save a little tiny sanctuary because people care more about money schemes and human utility. we lost the receptors because the culture doesn't care about nature, or community. it's all about the money. but some of us care, and because the sick fuck trump is in power some of us are getting fed up with the constant gruel of hate, and that may be causing us to rise up and save our park from the real estate predators like obomba and  woods. more and more good people are growing aware of the scam, and if we can rise together maybe we can have a different outcome than outright theft of the commons.

i think maria is coming around to liking me. before she would always just keep a-walkin. this time she walked close enough to touch and then walked around behind me and touched her nose to my leg in passing. then she sniffed the mister and finally even posed for me.

 you such a good dog.

 you such a good girl.

 i mo kiss your ear.

how you like me now?

 now even at a distance if i ask lulu to sit she will, and just look around and wait.

we ask so much of dogs. i was saying to my friend walking without her dog, she just wanted to be untethered, she said. i get that, i said, and we looked at mister doing his thing, and i said i just saw a doc on trees and how they give out healing aerosol molecular baths to people visiting or walking by, and i think dogs do the same thing. another girl came by and asked if she could bathe in mister's energy and i said yes, please. thank you, that's what i needed she said. thank you i said. oh yeah, we ask so much of dogs, to match their sensibilities to ours, to work with us and for our well being. we ought to be so grateful, as well as to the trees. we ask so much of them too. we need to help them to heal us. for we are so desperately in need.

diamond garage lulu. lulu sat and watched a girl on a bike approach and didn't move an inch. good afternoon, she said. she's so well behaved!