Shrouded Shore: The Many Musings of Thom Singleton

  White Wind Haiku It’s snowing in May. Cottonwood trees are shedding Their wispy-white flakes.

  Dandelions for Dinner The baby rabbit has his meal, dandelions gone to seed. He bites them off at the ground, and eats the long stem like he’s chewing a toothpick, or sucking a straw, until he comes to the round white head of seeds. This he munches too, but not before he looks white-bearded, much like a small child would eating a bowl of ice cream. I have a million or so dandelions in my lawn. I could have a thousand or two baby rabbits for dandelion dinner. While we don’t have a planted garden, we certainly do have one for the grazing deer, turkeys, rabbits, and other creatures that like diversity in a lawn. It's interesting to watch them forage. They know what plants to eat to fulfill their bodily needs.

  Winged Light of Spring Sun-filtered silver in the spring green leaves Riches of the goldfinches, little golden sparks Orange balls called robins bouncing across the lawn Buzz of pollinators, golden honeybees Rose-breasted grosbeaks, harbingers of gardens to come Masterpiece of waterbirds, shy wood duck Blue-black head of the grackle with his intense stare Strutter with a feathery train, wild turkey Dazzling robes of the orioles, small flying suns Spring’s visual treasures return

  The Invisibly Vital It’s everywhere and nowhere. We can feel it but not see it. We can even hear it in the trees. But otherwise, it is forgotten, taken for granted, out-of-sight-out-of-mind. Yet it’s something we experience, oh, say, every second or so, 86,400 times every day. In and out, in and out… Air, the air we breathe into our bodies. It’s vital. We need to clean it up.

  Art on the Wing After the bleak, colors like no other Grosbeak’s red rose Goldfinch’s yellow flash Oriole’s winged sun Hummer’s emerald coat and ruby throat A rare mountain bluebird’s glistening turquoise Grackle’s blue-black Blackbird’s red wings Wood duck’s stunning masterpiece More winged art every spring day All joining the blue and red year-rounders, jays and cardinals And all in an explosion of new leaf life So green you can almost taste it

  The Girl from Baltimore New in the neighborhood. Flew in from Baltimore, they say. With yellow-honey blonde tresses Dressed in the colors of the sun. Flits around light as a feather,  Especially to impress her even showier suitors, Those fellows as orange as the oranges on the feeder. Northern Orioles - male and female - have arrived.

  Austin Island A hill in lake water The water of the river The River Wisconsin Once a conduit for logs Logs cut by lumberjacks Lumberjacks of legend Who floated them downriver To a lake formed by a dam A dam in Rhinelander Which powered a mill there To make logs into lumber To build our State Lumber was not the only thing That the lake helped make there For as the water flooded  It turned a hill into an island Soon the island became The home for lumbermen When they used logs and lumber To build a cabin roughhewn Years later came a family A good, Christian family Who spied the island And made it as home The father a northwoods minister  And a down-to-earth mother Raised two sons to learn there What’s important in life The twelve-year-old excited  To live on an island Became proficient in building At a very early age A couple years later Built there a cabin As a teen he did build it Which gave him great joy The father he saw it The joy that it gave him And when the la...

  Pie in the Sky In the east this morning there is pie in the sky: Luscious layers of blueberry and banana cream, Crowned by vanilla meringue, A blueberry-banana dream. Cynics might say such dreams are not grounded, Impossibilities thought-up by poets and other naive sorts With their heads in the clouds. Sky sees it differently. She says “I’m beautiful, tasteful, and zero-calorie.”