From afar, in February,
you might think them dead
with drooping brown leafs
draped in Spanish moss
hiding watery stumps
and scores of raccoons
deep within their hollows,
but by the end of the month
they come alive with bellowing
frogs and piping spring
peepers sounding the chorus.
And out of nowhere lands
a sand hill crane having a red
stripe across his feathered face,
squawking like a pterodactyl,
looking through a lush green
grove of cypress trees in March.
—
Richard F. Fleck, now 88, has published a number of collections over the years, the first being Palms, Peaks and Prairies, 1967 and the most recent being Bamboo in the Sun: Poems of Japan, 2020. His many books include A Colorado River Reader, 2000, Desert Rims to Mountains High, 2013, and Henry Thoreau and John Muir among the Native Americans, 2016. He is a retired professor of American literature and Native American Studies at the University of Wyoming with visiting appointments at Osaka University, Japan and the University of Bologna, Italy.
