DAILY PHOTO: Mugger Crocodiles of Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary

Look Carefully!

PROMPT: Animals

What are your favorite animals?

All the non-human ones are pretty awesome, and even the humans can be tolerable in the proper dosage.

Pile of Sleeping Cats [Haiku]

counting ears
 to learn how many cats,
  but how deep 's the pile?

The Langur Family [Haiku]

a troop of langurs:
 five monkeys doing five things
  as one family.

Butterfly Dogfight [Haiku]

butterflies 
 in spastic jinky orbit:
  play or bloom combat?

Translucent [Haiku]

sunlight shines
 through the butterfly's wing:
  yet, it seems sluggish.

The Frog by Hilaire Belloc [w/ Audio]

Be kind and tender to the Frog,
   And do not call him names,
 As 'Slimy skin,' or 'Polly-wog,'
   Or likewise 'Ugly James,'
 Or 'Gape-a-grin, or 'Toad-gone-wrong,'
   Or 'Billy Bandy-knees':
 The Frog is justly sensitive
   To epithets like these.
 No animal will more repay
   A treatment kind and fair;
 At least so lonely people say
   Who keep a frog (and, by the way,
 They are extremely rare).

Monkey Courage [Haiku]

ten seconds after
 a dead limb broke under it:
  poised to leap again.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens [w/ Audio]

I
 Among twenty snowy mountains,
   The only moving thing
  Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
 I was of three minds,
   Like a tree
  In which there are three blackbirds.

III
 The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
   It was a small part of the pantomime. 

IV
 A man and a woman
   Are one.
 A man and a woman and a blackbird
   Are one.

V
 I do not know which to prefer,
   The beauty of inflections
 Or the beauty of innuendoes,
   The blackbird whistling
     Or just after.

VI
 Icicles filled the long window
   With barbaric glass. 
 The shadow of the blackbird
   Crossed it, to and fro.
 The mood
   Traced in the shadow
     An indecipherable cause.

VII
 Old thin men of Haddam,
   Why do you imagine golden birds?
 Do you not see how the blackbird
   Walks around the feet
     Of the women about you?

VIII
 I know noble accents
   And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
 But I know, too,
   That the blackbird is involved
     In what I know.

IX
 When the blackbird flew out of sight,
   It marked the edge 
 Of one of many circles.

X
 At the sight of blackbirds
   Flying in a green light,
 Even the bawds of euphony
   Would cry out sharply.

XI
 He rode over Connecticut
   In a glass coach.
 Once, a fear pierced him,
   In that he mistook
 The shadow of his equipage 
   For blackbirds.

XII
 The river is moving.
   The blackbird must be flying. 

XIII
 It was evening all afternoon.
   It was snowing
 And it was going to snow.
   The blackbird sat
     In the cedar-limbs.

Crow Cabal [Haiku]

three crows circled up.
their conversational look
makes me nervous.