Tag Archives: wetland pond

Beside the Wetland Pond

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Getting up at the break of day is not unusual. I get dressed and take the steps down from the loft to make the coffee. But this daybreak was different. Through the window of the A-frame cabin loft, I catch sight of the tops of two long white necks. I rush to the window to see a Trumpeter Swan pen and cob…and six cygnets parading across the yard. The next day they were nowhere to be found.

Below the Window

morning with the swans, GCS, May 24, 2023

slender snow-white necks
pass below the window of
the a-frame next to the 
wetland pond where the
trumpeter swans build their
borning home each year
while the red-wing blackbirds 
feast on cotton-candy puffs
the cat’n-nine-tails serve
for breakfast each spring
and the loons dive and
rise to feed their young by 
the land we think we own.

no “no trespassing” signs
mark the land where the two-
leggeds come when the 
Illusion of meta-verses 
where wetlands never shrink 
or die leave us yearning for 
this wondrous place where a 
trumpeter swan pen and cob
proudly march their young 
across the dmz between reality
and madness craning their 
necks to guard their cygnets 
from the two-leggeds looking
through the lofty windows.

Puff

the day after, GCS, March 25, 2023

there was no parade today
below the windows — no cob
or pen, no line of six cygnet
trumpeter swans — on our
side of the dmz, not a feather
left behind. An early morning
mournful loon cry warbles
across the pond a psalmic 
lament for the soul-mates who
return each year to build a nest 
to hatch and train the next 
newborn from primordial depths.

far from the wrecks of time where
drones with artificial intelligence
bulls-eyes drive the world insane —
perhaps somewhere in moscow 
or miami a strong-man thirsts for 
a place like this where cygnets,
cobs and pens play by the wetland 
no one owns where instead of 
drones with eyes that cannot not see -- 
no bully or bomb breaks the hush
when the red-wing blackbirds 
swoop and sing an ode to joy.

Gordon C. Stewart, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), 49 brief meditations on faith, life, and the news; July 24, 2023.

Morning Walk by the Shrinking Wetland Pond

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sumacs in autumn
THE WETLAND POND

The wetland pond is shrinking.
Dark-chocolate cattails and 
summer-green milkweed pods 
burst into the white cotton 
balls they always do when
autumn comes, a cotton 
field of wisps and puffs that 
match the color of my hair.

The sumacs are changing into
the red dress they always wear
this time of year, a royal
crimson robe, glistening in 
the morning sun before
frost and snow turn their 
fleeting autumn puffs from 
regal red to winter white. 
 
I see no yellow on the wetland
pond beside this dirt road that 
has no name or dot on anyone’s 
map. The yellow lilies on the 
lily-pads have gone to sleep
to greet the Spring again if
the pond is still here. 

--GCS, September morning walk
September 27, 2021.
O LORD, what are we that You should care for us?
     mere mortals that You should think of us?
We are like a puff of wind;
     our days are like a passing shadow.
Do not cast me off in my old age.
     (Psalm 144:3,4; 71:9 BCP)

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I wish I were a lily pad

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Early morning reflection from the dirt road by the wetland pond

Walking the off the map dirt road where nothing much happens, it’s quiet. The only sounds are bird songs; the only things that lie here are the lily pads lying on the shrinking wetland pond bordered by the cattails and wild flowers between the pond and the unpaved road. Nothing toils or spins. Nothing is anxious here. Not this morning.

Lily pads on a wetland pond

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet, I tell [all of] you [human beings], even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Jesus of Nazareth, Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:28b-29.)

There are no Solomons here. No kings. No countries. No states. Nothing seduced by the will-to-power. No illusions of sovereignty. No delusions of grandeur or control. No toiling and spinning like the mind observing it all from the dirt road. Everything is what it is: Yellow Goat’s-Beard, Yarrow, and Golden Clubs; Sweetflag, White Sweet Clover, and Butterfly-Weed; Bugle-Weed, Cuckoo-Flowers that aren’t cuckoo, and Bullhead-Lilies that don’t bully; pink Storkbills, Wild Sorels, Common Milkweeds, and blue-violet Pickerelweed.

Water lily –Photo by Hiu1ebfu Hou00e0ng on Pexels.com

Only the hunting-blind on the distant hill gives evidence of other spinning heads that toil for the mastery we cannot have. The hunting-blind on stilts high about the pasture waits for trigger fingers. Soon buckshots from the tower will fire babel that breaks the silence of this place. The flowers of the field — the Butterfly-Weed, the Bugle-Weed, and the Cuckoo-Flowers, the Lilies, and the lily pads — are not anxious. They are what they are. What is is what is. What will be will be. They neither toil nor spin.

— Gordon C. Stewart, from the wetland, August 3, 2021