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FacebookHunger as Focus
Wads of newspapers
New York Times
Glens Falls Post-Star
Albany Times-Union
With flames to pulp
kindling ignores news
Favors votes to get
dinner on the table
Almanack Contributor Edward Zahniser
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).
Poetry: Hunger as Focus
Poetry: Adirondack Blue
Adirondack Blue
Wind-spun cirrus clouds
Heaven’s cotton batting
Sky background that blue
we call “Adirondack blue”
St. Paul’s Ephesians letter
lays peace to a Quiet Mind
See how Black-eyed Susans
stare Autumn-ward now
Poetry: Eleventh Mountain
Eleventh Mountain
Yellow coffee can lids
nailed to trees through
gray duct tape squares
A worn path through ferns
vanishes in forest duff
Now and then a cut blaze
or rarely rock cairns
The way is not difficult
for those who have
no preferences
Poetry: Adirondack August
Adirondack August
Cutting wood and carrying water
Mind empty with no effort
Nearly stepped in the spring
I hum all day and no repetition
Wind soughs through fir balsams
Night silence so thick I hear it
Can’t keep things straight
Stars don’t seem to mind
Poetry: In-Tent Desire
In-Tent Desire
Cushioning softness
your warm belly
The Buddha
gave this up for
thin straw mats
on bare floors
whatever ground
of our being being
Who knows what other
folly might well indwell
that Eightfold Path?
Poetry: Summit
Summit
Wind dances atop
Crane Mountain
blowing sideways
No mosquitoes
fewer deerflies
No sweat beads
bud on face or neck
as the trail dries too
Nature balances
costs and benefits.
Poetry: Nundegao Ridge
Nundegao Ridge
On a table monolith
granite veined by quartz
like so many zippers
The children dance
in rock rain reservoirs
Nibble blueberries
Wind-protected
Hare-bells dance
on the ledge below
as hawk bursts out
below us forty feet
to rise on a thermal
Hollow hawk bones
soon “cloud-hidden
whereabouts unknown”
Poetry: Cabin Generations
Cabin Generations
Mom’s great grandkids
chatter like crickets
who sport human frames
busy-busy all day long
In the big tent now they
nap breathing deeply
as their dreams map out
who knows what trails?
Poetry: Back at the Cabin
Back at the Cabin
Breeze soughs among
uphill poplar stands
Newborn Rachel’s clothes
hang out to Sun-dry
White-throated sparrow
drops her final note
whose loud lack haunts
consciousness all day
Expectation unfulfilled
pattern recognition lost
Poetry: Changes
Changes
Broken by brief rain
dull heat disappears
tail between its clouds
I recall late-August
mornings as a child
dressing by the fire
Oatmeal bubbled thick
in big blackened pot
Mountains unmoved
since we went to bed
Clouds now crest them
heavily like a toddler
riding your shoulders
Poetry: Aging Vet
Aging Vet
Frayed old Army field
jacket keeps light rain
off my slim notebook
An aging vet, I’m like
a monk to desire with
only poems to show
Deerfly at 10 o’clock!
Mind pulls up to lose it
but instead the poem
veers off abruptly as
last winter’s ski crowd
beat their hasty retreat
Poetry: Not So Long Ago
Not So Long Ago
Half down the paved road
Husky sled dogs crackled
to chorus dinner time
Can openers slice
150 Alpo can tops
Fellow blackfly-buzzed
berserker mammals
Nature, the Other, the Big Outside (In Memory of Howard Zahniser)
Nature, the Other, the Big Outside
In Memory of Howard Zahniser
Okay, now don’t look me square in the eye
but watch my ears wiggle — you see him there,
my father, your grandfather, a wise guy
(who was also a wise-guy), taught me to stare
at nothing hard enough to make my ears move.
It’s a great skill if like me you can’t dance
but still feel the need to strut some and groove
dressed not in Nordstrum slacks but Goodwill pants.
Okay, open that window there — yes, wide.
What’s out there is everything that’s not you.
Sure, nature—the other, the big outside,
what redeems you, where you go to renew
yourself, learn to listen, maybe make vows.
Smell that? Not fire and brimstone — balsam boughs.
Poetry: Stars Long Dead
Stars Long Dead
How hard this now seems
to leave so few memories
Who will reckon us up
once we’ve finished here
Stars stud the sky but pay
no mind to who’s elected
Many looking bright flared
out last lights eons gone at
186,000 miles per second
as the universe’s vastness
makes them seem to shine
still to astonish us tonight
Poetry: Wind Refreshing Cabin Memories
Wind Refreshing Cabin Memories
Wind pushing uphill cannot clear
the mountain of this mist
nor quite bring on much-needed rain.
Aspen leaves quake on no ear,
their timeless tremulosa dismissed
with the white-throated sparrow’s refrain.
In the fireplace a green-cut round
of mountain ash boils out its sap
with flames pulled tall by wind
— that shouldn’t be bound
uphill. A freakish front’s mishap
let such a breach of etiquette in.
Crane Mountain lurks cloud-hidden
whereabouts unknown, memory
layered deeper than kitchen middens.
Dad recites Sandburg’s “There Is A Wolf in Me.”
until we’d pray the Lord our souls to take,
while the aura of the wolf kept us awake.
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Latest News Headlines
- Adirondack Railroad's 2023 highs and lows
- How will the weather change during a total solar eclipse?
- Fisher that attacked 3 in Queensbury was rabid
- Lewis County General Hospital doubles surgical capacity and plans to restart maternity services
- North Country's congresswomen vote to keep George Santos in office
- Key to farming in the Adirondacks? Resiliency
- Key stretch of Adirondack Rail Trail is complete
- High Rock on the Oswegatchie River
- St. Regis Falls school board fires 2 principals on same day, board member resigns
- Hickory Ski Center faces deadline to fund ski lifts
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