Florida, Oddly Enough

Ms Sam’s Old Words poster

In my still early 60’s, I get tired. Feel old. Look old, too. When I relax nowadays, it is extremely noticeable. But fatigue is very noticeable, too. We looked at our aged relatives once upon a time, right, and wondered, how did they get like that?  Ah, well, luck of the gene pool draw. The good, the bad, and the tired.

When tired, my arms want to drop down, grow feathers, go splash in the water. Never have to carry anything, again. My feet feel heavy; toes want to spread out wide - feel cool water moving all around them. When days are wearying, how blissful it would be to float downstream, paddling here or there in cool waters. Moving in and out of the shade. Have a simple bug and watercress dinner. Ducks, it is true what they say, you are lucky.

Ducks in Estero Creek

Wood-Duck 

by Isaac McLellan

In May-time, when the lilac-plumes

Droop from the branch their purple blooms;

When chestnuts clap their leafy hands,

And every bud with joy expands;

When in the moist, sequester'd nooks

Of woods is heard the call of brooks,

The wood-duck builds its downy nest

Secure from prowling schoolboy's quest.

The swampy, shallow creeks they haunt,

Where thick woods o'er the waters slant,

Whose interlacing branches make

A dusky evening in the brake;

And there their little nests are made

In hollow mossy log decay'd,

Or where the woodpecker had bored

The crumbling bark to hide his hoard,

Fast by the stream whose ripples beat

The tree-roots of their close retreat.

Most beauteous of all the race

That skim the wave or soar in space,

With plumage fairer than the rays

The bird-of-paradise displays,

A mottled purple gloss'd with green,

All colors in the rainbow seen;

No tropic bird of Indian skies

May rival thy imperial dyes.

Least wary of all fowl that wing

O'er salty bay or inland spring,

They haunt the pond whose reedy shore

Extendeth by the farmer's door,

Or rivulet whose waters trill

Their melodies below the mill;

And here the ambush'd gunner lies

To gather in his lovely prize.
Fair are thy haunts, O bird that glows
With hues of violet and rose, —
By lakelet, by transparent stream,
Fair as the landscape of a dream,
Fair with the drooping groves that throw
Their shadows o'er the current's flow;
Fair with the bordering slopes that lave
Their grasses in the crystal wave, —
The crystal wave reflecting back
The sky-cloud drifting on its track,
Where morn and eve enfold their wing
Celestial, and the bluebirds sing.

~Dorothy Dolores