Shrouded Shore: The Many Musings of Thom Singleton

  A Death in Spring New life everywhere - Trees and meadows greening, Winged migrants arriving and mating,  Even an opossum appears, large, possibly with pouched babies. Next day a lifeless gray hump on the edge of the woods. She wasn't playing 'possum. Complications? Poisoning? Injured by a car? We honor her struggles with a burial and remembrance, Her death, a reminder that life, no matter how glorious in spring, will end. And that each moment be one of gratitude and love. 

  Woody A day clear, calm, and light, quite spicy bright, A treasure of pleasure took flight. Our luck was to glimpse a wet duck fresh from the rinse. He emerged from the verge of the wood. A dream to the eyes, of seven colors comprised, A wood duck, a visual prize.

  Our Heart Ever think about your heartbeat? Waking or sleeping, it goes on and on, Coursing lifeblood through your body. No wonder the heart is the symbol of love. Hard-working, freely giving. An example for the fear-driven mind to change. To spread love in the world, Nonstop.

  Spring Awakens Sleeping the long winter in suspended animation, The maple awakens, bursts buds into light green beauty. Leaves begin once again to breath the tree, inhaling carbon, exhaling oxygen. The tree is one of many in our world in support of air-breathing beings. Other life forms green-up the world - grass, irises, clover. Deer, looking tattered, shed last year’s coat in April warmth, and graze in the clover. Summertime feeders are up to attract our spring migrants - orioles and hummingbirds. Two mated mallards have made our pond theirs. They feed on seed dropped from our feeders, then float in the pond, always preening. Other friends make their grand appearance, a pair of wood ducks in all their glory. But, so much for writing, as I have beaks to feed.  

  An Eclipse of the Mind      You don’t see things as they are. You see things as you are.                                                                                 -Talmud You look up - through special glasses - and see what you think is the Moon, an arc of light. The Earth is between the Sun and the Moon. The Earth is shading the Moon, right? But it’s daytime on solar eclipse day, and this is different. The Moon is between the Earth and the Sun. We’re seeing an arc of Sun, not an arc of Moon. For a moment, we thought we saw what we’re used to, an arc of Moon, but it dawned on us that it was an eclipse of the Sun. We saw it initially through the lens of our experience. We saw things as we are.

  Early Morning Reverie A filigree of light filters through the leafless trees, and their shadows fall on our diaphanous drapes. The morning light in the eastern sky is muted by cloudy wisps.  The sun, awakened but not as yet up and around, is revealed as a red-orange hue on the horizon, below a gray-blue arch of sky. The wind is calm, tired by all its high-speed antics of previous days. Slowly the orange orb appears in the low tree branches. The peace of the present pervades, a prayer itself for all peoples of Earth, that their day may dawn in peace.