Apartment 27

Descending the stair I saw people in a knot
Who are they, and what are they doing? I thought.
   Gathered round a turtle
   The scene I deemed fertile
For making friends by asking about the reptile they'd caught.

Poem from the Field III

"The Blind"

Ensconced in a burlap fortress

Invisible, to some degree,

to life around me,

I struggle to sit still

on the shoulder of a 45° hill.

Though mosquitoes mob my face

I must stay in his place

til this watch is...

done.

Poem* from the Field II

Hispaniolan Woodpeckers (Melanerpes striatus)

This itinerant life
guided by two things:
One, my whim.
Two, the Texas A&M Wildlife Job Board.
Society cannot comprehend,
calling me directionless.
(Maybe a failure, behind my back)
Working jobs for no money.

I'm here, outside
Hauling a pack, watching birds, climbing trees
Living with former strangers
(Now dear friends)
Eating good food,
laughing in the sun.
It's a good life,
this itinerant one.


* A literary critic informed me that a limerick is a poem with a specific structure and not, as I had thought, a term for a amateurish diddy. (Thanks, Mom.) So, this series gets a new title...