Saturday, June 22, 2019

Poetry: Adirondack Mountain Matins

 

Adirondack Mountain Matins

Tremulous aspen leaves applaud
each breeze without discrimination
Unseen hummingbird wing beats
render human heartbeats both
static and ecstatic by comparison

Monarch caterpillars munch milkweed
to make themselves toxic to predators
These mountains are great grandparents
to the far Himalayas and wear down
slower than the novice monk’s stout will

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Ed Zahniser retired as the senior writer and editor with the National Park Service Publications Group in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. He writes and lectures frequently about wilderness, wildlands, and conservation history topics. He is the youngest child of Alice (1918-2014) and Howard Zahniser (1906–1964). Ed’s father was the principal author and chief lobbyist for the National Wilderness Preservation System Act of 1964. Ed edited his father’s Adirondack writings in Where Wilderness Preservation Began: Adirondack Writings of Howard Zahniser, and also edited Daisy Mavis Dalaba Allen’s Ranger Bowback: An Adirondack farmer - a memoir of Hillmount Farms (Bakers Mills).


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One Response

  1. Bob Meyer says:

    Thanks Ed. Great imagery.
    Most people don’t know that we in the N.E. have Aspen. It’s associated with the Rockies. We actually have 2 kinds of Aspen. Quacking [like the West] and Big Tooth. Aspen is a circumpolar plant in that it’s in all continents of the N. Hemisphere.
    OK, I’ve officially geeked out 🙂

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