Best Foragers Poems
Pinning chests like puffins to project
fuzzy assertion,
huddled, brave foragers
chase the crumbs along the
stained ground,
flapping feathers of civility during
auspicious climbs and
daft plummets, swooping in
massive waves of perplexed flesh
until frenzied,
shifting and undulating in rage like a
storm of hungry nerves
all darting with beaks coiled
in panicked alarm: no longer just a
severe warning.
When the snout of lush abundance is full and flowing,
when all prey and creature-kind spill upon the verdant swards,
then it is that I worry night and day,
for the stoat, fox and hawk are at work,
they scythe in the whelm and nimiety, they hack and harrow.
The kits and chuckling’s are many, the light too bright;
for then the foragers forgoing fright, are palpable and open.
The long-eared nibblers, hairs on scattered rodents laid bare,
they scutter, skitter and twitch much in the open
greatly prone to be pounced upon;
their paltry pelts all unhidden, and being many,
and not running, they are huddled; yet not strong.
If this slew not ease, if the grabbers not falter,
if the singled-out dither, the glut not wither,
then the green snake will climb to where nestlings hutch -
they all so easily plucked and quickly snatched.
I worry for the wee brown birds; mottled shells still unhatched.
I fear a winnowing, withal a harsh hazard of gorge and sate.
I fret for the freshly delivered, the teeming,
the newly produced, all the bounding bounty
for those too easily found and so, arrived too late.
We forage for humanity,
hidden fruits quench our thirst.
Our hunting grounds, old overgrowth forest
just off the rail-line, down the hill to the
river, was a hobo camp long ago. Broken
pottery, tin plates and old bottles half
buried, speak of life's struggle. An attempt
at a foundation, now crumbling, imagines
hope for permanence, dissolved roots taken
by time.
The search, akin to walking through remnants
of a forgotten culture, feels like trespassing.
We sit and contemplate our passage as Wild
Turkeys scavenge nearby.
Peace is our prize.
Tryouts starring musical prodigies
and/or an attendant conductor
attempt to approach ambient chorus
divinely exhibited from Gaia's handiwork
heavenly invoking kapellmeister's magnificent nonchalant outlook
piquantly, quintessentially, repertoire sensately striking
unmatched vast wisdom yielding, zephyr air albeit creativity
engineered from groundswell harmony
juxtaposed, kindled, linkedin,
manifesting noteworthy opulent philharmonic recording
transcribing universal veritable webbed wide world.
Wunderkinds yield Ziggurat acme approximated asymptote
bequeathing celestial Doppelganger Earthly emulations
formulating fractal glinting highlighting
ineffable joie de vivre jostling, keen kindling,
la la land legerdemain lifting logic
lording Ludwig (Josef Johann) Wittgenstein.
?
Yelping zoological apostle Al affidavit Gore handily
heaping hubristically invocation jolting kickstart measures
nipping nixed noblesse oblige opera
quickening quotidian rapid ruination sans supreme
teetering upended venerated wise with acumen
arithmetical Benoit Mandelbrot
chasing far-fetched ideas
lightyears menacing nihilism purging ogres opportunistically
resplendently ripping revered tankard tipping unstoppably
vanquishing varietal whipsawing wonderful wrapt yawning youngsters
warfare written wrought yanking zestfully crushing environmental family
granting Herculean instant karma
malevolent, opprobrious pronouncement
quiet riot silencing severely tragic ubiquitous vicious wreckage
yikyaks apemen cleft Earth.
*************************************************
Future foragers denounce capitalistic bamboozlers aggression
zealots wrought trashing quintessential naked kingdoms issue
flotsam coagulates zonal wastelands torquing quality NON
killing habitats Earth bleached yellowed voodoo ruins.
Sea purslane & wild garlic
A pot roasted rabbit
cooked with boletus fungi
Winter chantrelles
Japanes knotweed
Apple juice
Wild!
In the mirror,
When I look,
I see the son of thousands.
I see the son of the foragers,
The wanderers who hunted the world,
The agrarians who farmed the fields,
The ones driven by famine to strange lands,
The ones taken in battle, enslaved and sold,
All those fathers, mothers and teachers.
Others looking into their mirrors
They see one face staring back,
Their own, their own two eyes,
Their own nose and their own hair,
Such as they have—or have not.
Men of short sight despite their stature,
Self-made men, blind to those thousands before
Without whose shoulders they would not there stand.
They have eyes, but they cannot see into their own depths,
Their vision shallow as the fog settling lower on the glass.
They see only the One they are now in that soppy looking-glass,
That steamy, silvered, steadfastly secured sheet sheathed in steel,
Framed or clamped, it matters not, it matters nothing—
Save for that face they see.
They cannot see what they are, where they have been,
The sufferings they have suffered, or the glories they have lost--
While they look into the mirror.
They see not at all
All those glories and terrors that have made them.
They see but a single reflection, this moment,
Their singular selves looking back.
Forgotten are the thousands of mothers who nursed them,
The thousands of fathers who protected them,
Hunted, killed, sowed and reaped,
And taught them to live, to survive.
They see not the thousands,
Wise and fools, slaves and free,
Conquerors and conquered
That are stitched into their very being,
That which makes them who they are.
But, for today, I see.
These eyes of mine, they see that army that I am.
The dead are not corpses, not dead in me this day.
They of the centuries, the millenia, the untold eras behind,
They stand here with me, in me.
I am the son of thousands,
I am the reflection of the reflection
In the mirror.
Lucky is a red ear slider terrapin who currently lives with me.
For all intents and purposes, let's refer to Lucky as a she.
I named her Lucky because it was lucky that I just so happened to be
at the same place where Lucky was abandoned so very cold heartedly.
In a small fish bowl, on the curb, left out with the trash was she,
but I happened by, saw her and rescued Lucky.
She now lives a life of relative comfort and safety
in the 55 gallon aquarium that I have provided for she,
where she can bask on her float or go swimming freely,
or forage through the gravel searching for something to eat.
Lucky's stay with me however is only temporary.
When she has grown large enough to successfully compete
among other foragers in a habitat more naturally,
that will be the day when I inevitably set Lucky free
to live the rest of her life the way it was intended to be.
I would prefer however in all honesty
a man made pond on someone's private property,
perhaps stocked with fish, frogs and other turtles already
where routine feedings occur regularly.
Should anyone know of such a place that would freely
accept a red ear slider turtle into their sanctuary,
I would appreciate it if you could somehow inform me.
Heartfelt appreciation would also be extended from my gal Lucky.
herring gulls flocking
foraging at the beaches-
disappearing lunch
7/27/18
Contest - Son of Senryu
Sponsor - Brahn Bailey
Carnival without merit, affinity, and association
Brash, bellowing band bleeting notes in oscillation
Circus creatures cavorting about with every unseemly provision
Cascading, carnival chorus clanging through every subdivision
Haughty, kilted henchmen trotting in front of the procession
Decadently-dressed damsels fawning at mock adulation
Coarsely-clad clowns tromping along in derision
Freaky, festooned floats fluttering through every alley and intersection
Ghastly garlands strewn about with every drunken petition
Teaming, throbbing townspeople on marauding mission
Corrupt Councilors culled and paraded about in degradation
Frugal, free-loading foragers scraping up every token donation
Vacuous, votive vendors profitting from their abnegation
Ebullient, enterprising entrepreneurs scalping without aversion
Scouts probe territory for nest site
Scour cracks, crevices that invite
Search cavity for any structural blight
Recon area for creatures that fright
Examination complete, return to hive
Inform workers about potential, new dive
Caucusing, new consensus to derive
Coalescing, to other bees send vive
Scouts guide colony to new location
Formulating comb workers new vocation
From honey extract new colation
Emanating, waxy cells new station
In upper cells honey will pour
Underneath, pollen laid in store
Below, worker, drone broods bore
At base Queen pods do gore
Queen lays eggs in every assigned spore
Hatchling larvae from nest now implore
Nursing becomes workers new chore
Feeding every beckoning pore
Workers seal chambers with waxy mortar
Larvae evolves into pupae in short order
Days later, fledglings chew through pasty border
Forthwith, become queen's new warder
After tending queen, receive new commission
Guards protect domicile from every imposition
Drones mate with the queen at every petition
Foragers busy themselves with pollen acquisition
At night you hear the falling where the air parts
to whisper its apologies.
Only after the snow has touched an eve or ledge
do you hear the settling; hollow sounds speaking
between uncountable flakes
as they collide together
creating muted earthquakes just below the stillness.
Then perhaps you may become aware
of the bushy or hairless tails of ice-scuffling foragers;
the patter of padding paws or claws.
If asked, you’d swear the sky
was crunching the surface of dark waters
but it’s just the sound of a colorless gravity walking.
War
Is where
Nobody wins
And everybody sins
At the unbeautiful bar
War is hell on earth
At birth
God created humans
To be better than the lions
And the other nefarious predators
That’s a given
War transforms young men
And young women
Into absurd killers and murderers
War is criminal
War is suicidal
The truth hurts. Oh! Boy. Oh! Boy
Vile foragers oppress, attack, maim and destroy
Common sense is absent in wartime
No countries are at their prime
Where they harvest dead victims, casualties
Pains, sufferings, animosities and calamities
War is immoral
War is awful
War is for crazed gangsters
War is for ireful bouncers
Death comes early for numberless youngsters
Families are worrying, crying and mourning
And don’t care about vanity, flags and flowers
Families only care about the living
Love, peace, harmony and humanity
War is wasteful
War is baneful
War is for dreadful pit-bulls
War is for god-awful fools
Premature death is unacceptable and crazy
And cemeteries are plentiful and not empty
How sad and unnecessary to be so strong
And to die so early and so young
How sad and inhumane to be so wrong
And to fail flat to unite in order to sing a fine song
Life is precious on all sides
Intolerance chokes and arrogance divides
Diplomacy is the key to resolving our current differences
Dialogue is the password to open up countless entrances
To find common ground
Better and friendlier sound
War is never the equitable answer to the question
But love is the quintessentially perfect solution
To the human or mundane equation.
Copyright © February 2022, Hébert Logerie, All rights reserved.
Hébert Logerie is the author of several collections of poems.
Graceful predator perched on the precipice of woe
Your satin crown, ebony feathers cannot camouflage mision of misery you'll sow
Your balmy wings caress as dark shadows grow
You sharpen your talons lethal grasp your helpless prey to show
But only quicken the hearts of foragers nestled below
Shrill call does not alarm wary prey; only emboldened, novel defenses bestow
Slower prey their extended units disband; bountiful feast now in escrow
Stealthy ears pick up the feigned, stressful calls of dispossessed lying low
The harried remnant recedes into veiled canopy with their cargo
Confident dive bomber, you plunge into the shielded canopy mayhem to strew
Only to have pleated wings torn by thistle, thorn guarding the undertow
Injured, but deadly weapons your armada still doth tow
With sharp beak you shred the stragglers who venture into twilight's afterglow
With bristling talons you scratch and claw causing stiffened backs to bow
But their desire to live trumps marauding havoc laid in stow
Shorn of limb but not of hope, scurrying from nest to nest to and fro
Storm clouds gather over Dover cliffs; thunderous chorus from nest doth bellow
On the sparring range, a docile, prevailing wind no longer doth blow
Wearied from long chase, depleted eagle from bleeding strand doth go
Alias indomitable invincible
Donald John Trump oozes wrath
inexorably plunging every species
of life toward apocalyptic warpath
mercilessly threatentens world
wide web promising bloodbath
validating ex post facto commander
in chief as nonpareil sociopath
hence... this call to arms gives run
for money challenging any psychopath
lest inevitable according to dead
reckoning prediction of
wisest sages calculated math.
Thus one poetic footsoldier doth broadcast
dire straits emergency, and inveigh
grassroots action mandatory meaning
registered voters must
cast ballot per se
else planet Earth will...
burn thermonuclear gray
rendering oblate spheroid
uninhabitable, I daresay
if bleak forecast father time doth delay
global warming would outweigh
former worst case nihilistic scenario,
nonetheless Gaia will serve
as repurposed ashtray,
whereby inextinguishable fiery storms
approximating calculus of doomsday
nsync with intolerable weather forecasts
if complacency rides roughshod field day
defying lack of immunization oy vey
against opportunistic unfamiliar organisms
viral and bacterial agent provocateurs
microscopic gangbusters
nothing could allay
winning scrimmage play
thinning overpopulation whereby
scavengers make short shrift
plethora once living flotsam and jetsam
perhaps requiring rotting, putrefying,
goods put on layaway
(type of foragers -
reference https://www.google.com/search?
client=safari&channel=mac_bm&ei=
KECaXe_UA6SO5wLh-7gY&q=list+
examples+of+scavengers&oq=list+types+
of+scavengers&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0i22i30.
58737.70074..70997...0.4..0.223.1875.
21j2j1......0....1..gws-wiz.......
0i71j0i273j0j0i131j0i67j33i22i29i30.
wnDI0kLrKWM).
now ye might hashtag me chicken little
synonymous to Rome burning,
while Nero did fiddle,
perhaps scaremonger i.e. Cassandra
alamist bah bing away, a realist foaming
at figurative mouth with spittle,
would you believe cautious optimist,
who presents prediction,
while this poem heed whittle.
"For someone's joy is often someone else's despair" by Poet X
Excited children grin and cheer to see the snow;
a winter wonderland indeed for them to play -
their parents are not quite as pleased to see it though
(but memories of joy remain from yesterday).
As creatures hibernate or hungry, search for food,
the children's pets will frolic, happy as the kids.
The foragers and playful children can be viewed
from cars that cannot move or only manage skids!
The elderly afraid to leave their comfy homes
-a slip or fall is something to be greatly feared -
will feed the garden birds and reminisce of roams
on snowy hillsides, drives and paths that they once cleared.
And homeless shiver praying that the snow won't last,
their thoughts are far from happy times when snow brought joys,
and pulling blankets up against the icy blast,
their slitted eyes view happy laughing girls and boys.
Excited children grin and cheer to see the snow,
as creatures hibernate or hungry, search for food,
the elderly afraid to leave their comfy homes,
and homeless shiver praying that the snow won't last.
written 7th December for Constance's Created Form contest