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August 9, 1998
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"Poets are marvelous. Pears are too." -- Tom Mofford Tom's theme today at the North Parish lay-led service was "Wonder, Mystery, and Doubt". He read a lot of Emerson, some poems from Ferlinghetti, and a wonderful poem about a glass of water by a poet whose name I can't remember right now (Oops). I read a poem by Amy Clampitt about looking at shorebirds through binoculars and a couple paragraphs by Jennifer Ackerman from Notes from the Shore about the monk parakeet colony in Rehoboth, Delaware. (feral monk parakeets are featured this week on The Mining Company birding site) Patrick read some of his own poems and some poems by Gary Snyder, Whitman, and Rimbaud, and sang one of his songs. Joan-west has returned from her first semester of studying Tibetan Buddhism in Italy. She arrived yesterday and spent the night with another friend. She called this morning and I arranged to pick her up after her lunch with visiting teacher, Neil Huston, at House of Tibet Kitchen in Somerville. After meeting all these people whose names I will never remember, and loading Joan's luggage into my car, we stopped for coffee at the Someday Cafe to discuss plans for the day and the week. Joan very much wanted to visit Plum Island so we drove up there. When we checked in at the refuge gatehouse, the attendant told us there was a fork-tailed flycatcher at Bill Forward Pool. Joan's not into birds, but could understand that I wanted to check it out. So off we went in search of the fork-tailed flycatcher. When we got to Bill Forward Pool there was group of birders gathered around their scopes looking out over a stand of pine trees just beyond the pool. I asked one of them if he'd seen the fork-tailed flycatcher and he said "Yes,it was perched there 10 minutes ago." He showed us the exact spot where it had been 10 minutes ago. It was not there now. We waited for it to return. More birders gathered. Still no sign of the fork-tailed flycatcher. Joan wandered off along the dike and up the observation tower. I looked at many great egrets, snowy egrets, mallard and black ducks, a kingbird, a yellow warbler, a pair of goldfinches, the remains of a beaver dam. Still no fork-tailed flycatcher. Mindful that this was Joan's only chance to visit the refuge on this trip, I decided I would forgo waiting for the fork-tailed flycatcher and go for a walk on the beach with her. We walked in the water and got thoroughly soaked then sat on the beach burying our bare legs in sand so the greenheads, horseflies and deer flies would have a harder time getting us. Finally we brushed off the sand, went to Bertucci's for pizza and spent the rest of the evening catching up. |
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