Category Archives: nature
POEM: The Monster
“To freeze or flee?” Asks creatures terrified,
when monsters stomp through forests, glens, or fields.
I know what it’s like, standing stuck mid-stride.
Yet, I’m more oft the monster than he who yields.
Maybe you wonder on the monster’s life,
if the fact never occurred to you that you’re
the stomping monster of the chipmunk’s strife.
when you have that most pleasant hike or tour.
The screech, that call, that’s screamed to each and all
is not some passing fancy or fevered
dancing of critters seeking daytime prowls.
They’re warning others they feel beleaguered.
“You must be this tall to be a monster,”
reads a sign no taller than a lobster.
DAILY PHOTO: Hills Near Ramanagara
DAILY PHOTO: Rock Agama
DAILY PHOTO: Cool Bugs of Karnataka
DAILY PHOTO: Wrinkly Forehead
DAILY PHOTO: Shathashrunga Landscapes
DAILY PHOTO: Kolsai Lake Trail
POEM: Day’s End Dance

Patches of pink on army green —
the rhododendrons bloom.
In the hills of Himalaya —
gone the sad winter gloom.
Gone the weight of weary sinew —
the soul begins its float.
We feel the fire of shining skies
as we shed pack and coat.
The body, so still and silent —
nonetheless takes to dance.
The hike’s exhaustion falls away
and one tunes in the trance.
POEM: Death & Nature
Don’t bother to bury or burn my body —
just let my bones bleach white.
Throw me in a hole in the jungle —
food for wild dogs, worms, and germs.
Nature’s truth —
a truth painful only to humans —
is that in life we are all consumers,
and in death we are all food.
In nature’s view,
big brains put us no closer to the feet of gods
than does the ancient memory of trees,
the octa-ambidexterity of an octopus,
or the network optimization of fungal mycelia.
We are all both consumer & food.

















