Category: Nature

Be The Best of Whatever You Are

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 2 Comments

The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning is RESILIENCE

From Goodreads I’ve borrowed this inspiring quote by Daniel Radcliffe:

“A hero is also someone who, in their day to day interactions with the world, despite all the pain, uncertainty and doubt that can plague us, is resiliently and unashamedly themselves. If you can wake up every day and be emotionally open and honest regardless of what you get back from the world then you can be the hero of your own story.”

And seconding the thought with this poem from long ago:

Be the Best of Whatever You Are
by Douglas Malloch

If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill
Be a scrub in the valley–but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.

If you can’t be a bush be a bit of the grass,
And some highway some happier make;
If you can’t be a muskie then just be a bass–
But the liveliest bass in the lake!

We can’t all be captains, we’ve got to be crew,
There’s something for all of us here.
There’s big work to do and there’s lesser to do,
And the task we must do is the near.

If you can’t be a highway then just be a trail,
If you can’t be the sun be a star;
It isn’t by size that you win or you fail–
Be the best of whatever you are!

February Fool?

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 3 Comments

The Ragtag Daily Prompt word for today is SPRING

We attended a funeral in Moose Jaw yesterday, Bob’s 84-year-old cousin passed away. It was a perfect day for travelling, warm and sunny. Snow melting everywhere gave fair puddles on streets and in parking lots. Leaving the funeral home I looked around and exclaimed, “Spring has sprung!”

Another couple leaving at the same time chuckled and the woman said, “If this were the first of March, I might believe it.”

No, we’re not fooled. It would take an awful lot of climate change to give Saskatchewan spring in February. We hope the trees aren’t fooled into putting out their little buds and having them nipped in the -20 C days to come. Going home we saw many ice fishing huts set up on Buffalo Pound Lake in the Qu’Appelle Valley. Those fishermen aren’t expecting a thaw anytime soon.

I’ve been writing a number of haiku lately so will post a few others later today. But here’s a  verse I wrote as an elegy?…requiem?…epitaph?…for the maple sapling that rooted under our back deck last summer and tried to shoot through the slats. A brave effort put forth, but so unappreciated and wasted by being in the wrong place.

“Bloom where you’re planted,” they say. However, one must add the corollary: “Be sure to plant yourself in a good place if you can.” 😉

through slats on our deck
a sapling reaches for the light
well it tried

 

From My Back Door

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 13 Comments

The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning is:  LOOKING OUT MY BACKDOOR.

hoarfrost-3491999_640
Clarence Peters — Pixabay

We don’t have the new dusting of snow and hoar frost this morning, but our scenes are as above, all winterish white and gray. The odd magpie and crow visits or flies over now and then to add its own shades to the scene.

magpie-4661322_640
TheOtherKev — Pixabay

However, the other day when I drove out of my yard a huge bird took flight from a tall old tree at the edge of our yard; a second look told me the bird was a bald eagle. As it circled over the field just south of the road I was on, I got a good view of this regal bird.

bald-eagle-1018717_640
skeeze — Pixabay

If you haven’t already, why don’t you pop over and see how various bloggers have responded to this prompt. All bloggers are welcome to write and share their own posts on the topic. LOOKING OUT MY BACKDOOR

Mouse-work

~ Christine Goodnough ~ Leave a comment

what courage mouse!
risking your whiskers for rice
hunger makes us all brave

deserted wren house
whitefoot mouse clan
renovates

field mice explore
a mountain of stored grain
blessings rain down

mice in the hayloft
nestled into next summer’s
scarecrow

Flourish.plainer

If you like to read haiku, here’s a journal you may be interested in:

seashores
According to the publisher, The Fishing Cat Press, the objective of seashores is to share haiku from all over the world and explore how the way and the spirit of haiku, with its power to connect us to nature and our world, can play a role in poetry and our lives in general. Click here to learn more.