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Book of Days

BOOK OF DAYS: A POET AND NATURALIST TRIES TO FIND POETRY IN EVERY DAY

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Filtering by Tag: shadows

March 9: Chasing my shadow

Kristen Lindquist

Often on longer drives, my mind wanders into more imaginative terrain. Perhaps it's the stimulation of the ever-changing landscape outside the window or the simple thrill of being on the road with blue skies and sunshine around me. As I was driving eastward home from a trip to Bath this afternoon, the setting sun  cast the shadow of my car directly before me on the road. I was tailgating my own shadow. My car is fairly compact, squat-looking from the sun's low angle. I amused myself with the idea that my car's shadow looked some sort of Japanese anime character: the side-view mirrors gave it the appearance of having ears; the two front seat headrests were its eyes. Weird thought, I know. But it helped while away the miles. I was actually a bit disappointed when the sun sank so low that the shadow disappeared; I'd gotten used to thinking of it a separate entity that I was following up Route One.

My car's cast shadow
becomes a strange gray creature
I'm following home.



January 15: Shadows on the Snow

Kristen Lindquist

As I sat at my desk writing this morning, my attention was diverted by something small darting back and forth outside the window. It took me awhile to figure out what it was, because it was moving fast, and, it turns out, wasn't truly tangible. I was seeing shadows on the snow of a nuthatch moving quickly and with agility among the boughs of a tree hanging over the back yard.

As I watched more intentionally, more shadows flickered across the snow. A flock of bright-throated goldfinches passed through, then a handful of chickadees flew back and forth from the bird feeder on the other side of the house. A chickadee landed right in front of me on the porch rail outside my office window and then flew up to grab something off the gutter--some frozen insect carcass, perhaps? A pair of blue jays made their presence known. Then a downy woodpecker flew in to explore a tree trunk. A small flock of starlings, a species I've never seen in our yard before, cast large shadows as they perched for a moment in our big maple tree. All this activity happened in the space of about half an hour. As the sunlight has raised the air temperature, the birds have clearly been making the most of their daylight time.

Not long after, I even had the privilege of watching a pair of crows chase a red-tailed hawk through the air space above my yard. Imagine how much I'd have missed if I'd never bothered to look up when those shadows first caught my eye.

Shadows on the snow:
a moment's activity,
a flurry of birds.