I've suffered writer's block tonight, but I've waited it out.

When I was in high school, we were supposed to write a paper on Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The night before it was due came around, and I had nothing! Could think of nothing to write. So I played with words and and started writing a poem while I waited the writer's block out. Well, I became very taken by this poem-writing, and before long, had a verse of many stanzas about Huck Finn, with a refrain that communicated in words the rhythm of the unending flow of the Mississippi river. By the time it was done, I was emptied, and couldn't write a paper too, and wondered if the teacher would accept a poem instead. (I have to say, I thought it was cheating because it had been so pleasurable it couldn't be home-WORK, right?)

To my surprise, the teacher expressed pleasure and gave me a good grade. I wish I still had the poem. Huckleberry Finn is not just a dried up piece of American folklore. It's a book with great life, and, even with the long journey on the river, it's a book with a storyline, and colorful side stories. It's strongly anchored in the times and the natural characteristics of the river, but also strikes a universal chord. One thing that's sad is that the strong relationship between the motherless white boy and a man who is a runaway slave crumbles as they return to society at the end of the journey. Life on the raft is one world; life on land is another with its imbedded cruelties, deceptions, and expectations.

A couple of questions come to mind: Could a person today take a raft trip from Missouri to the mouth of the Mississippi? I don't know. And, where might one find huckleberries?

There was a Montessori School near where we lived in the 1990s. Kids were very happy there. The teachers, at times consciously, at times intuitively, made learning materials available, and the kids were permitted to discover on their own timing fundamentals of reading and math and geography through these puzzles and games that served as building blocks.. The kids learned so much, as though without effort but with pleasure and enthusiasm.

The approach did not confine itself to academics, but embraced the whole of life. The kids wiped down their tables after an exercise, they had access to kid-sized brooms and mops, and they made snacks of celery, peanut butter, and raisins. These were known as 'ants on a log'. They had a vegetable garden, and took pleasure in the lady bugs they used to balance out the numbers of aphids.

Each child brought his or her own face towel to school. They had their names embroidered or tagged on it, and their own peg on which to hang it. The towels were used instead of paper to dry their hands. The teachers generously laundered them each week, along with the school cloths used for cleanups. As a parent, I enjoyed helping the kids pick a towel to bring, and helping them label it. I thought the consciousness of the school regarding paper (for another example, they often used discarded office paper for kids to draw on and write their stories), as well as self-reliance and responsibility, was admirable.

Maria Montessori developed the program a century ago. I read one of her books - the school was originally designed to reach children with special needs. She came up with numerous ways to learn using multi-sensory activities. Thus a child with hearing problems might use visual stimuli, and tactile materials such as blocks and puzzles to learn. These methods proved to be excellent for educating not only those with special needs, but any kids, and maybe grown-ups too.

butterflies and frogs

This morning, butterflies and frogs surfaced in the same thought.

I'd never thought about them having much in common, but here we are, two formerly common backyard creatures who in their youth are completely different lifeforms than in their adulthood.

Butterflies and Frogs. Now, step back a week or two and consider Caterpillars and Tadpoles.

There is some kind of true magic that occurs in the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly. Here you have the caterpillar, with this huge appetite, spending days walking up and down stems and leaves, walking and munching, walking and munching. As long as there are plenty of leaves and not so much bad weather as to get washed away, the caterpillar has the good life. Then, one day, caterpillar, much larger and very healthy, looks a little sluggish, body moving more slowly. It's almost like - well, this is good, but what else is there? Munching slows down, slows down until caterpillar stops eating. Then, I don't know how it happens. Maybe the biologists know but I don't. Because there it is, a caterpillar hanging onto a stem, and then, with no added ingredients, and you can watch it happen, there's no longer a caterpillar there but a chrysalis, like a colorful piece of luggage dangling on a stem; no face, legs or anything like that is evident. Then, a few days later, a fabulous creature unfolds, a butterfly. The air dries its wings a bit, and it takes flight, like an expert pilot who has already put in his 200 hours of training flight. No practice hours at being a butterfly. There's no such thing as a baby butterfly.

Given how plentiful butterflies have been on earth, its surprising how few humans have ever watched this take place. We have to remind ourselves when these wormy-looking bugs are eating all the leaves off our tomato plants that to kill a caterpillar is to also kill the butterfly or moth.

Years back, a friend gave me this gorgeous plant that grew and grew and flowered into double trumpets, the blooms purple on the exterior and white on the interior. The blooms were a good six or seven inches long, or maybe even longer. The plant thrived in a large pot on the deck.

One day, these caterpillars show up, and they're doing the main caterpillar thing which is, as stated above, walk and munch, walk and munch. I figure nervously, well, there are lots of leaves here, this is ok. But the leaves start disappearing, and the caterpillars are growing huge, and they look more like enemy than co-inhabitant. So I try moving them elsewhere, but I feel bad because I know the elsewhere doesn't have the special leaves this particular type of caterpillar requires to become this particular type of butterfly or moth and I don't know whether the caterpillars will survive.

The next spring, the same thing happens. Same kind of caterpillar on the same plant (whose name I may remember before finishing typing this story). But this time, I'm not going to take the caterpillars away. I figure nature must have an answer here, otherwise, either the plants or the caterpillars wouldn't survive into the future.

The caterpillars eat every cotton-pickin leaf off that plant.

Oh no! I must have been wrong, very very wrong. The huge plant that had such gorgeous foliage and was soon to bloom was now - well - a nude stick.

The caterpillars, more exposed now walking on the bare branches, are picked off one by one by a local mockingbird. Oy!

Time passes. A couple of weeks later, I see the plant is covered again with fresh foliage, more dense and lush than ever before. The huge blooms come about, with their frilled edges, inviting large pollinators.

The next year, year three, caterpillars - the same kind - show up again. Maybe some of the previous caterpillars were not devoured by birds, and made it to the chrysalis state. And the datura (I said I'd remember its name) foliage is consumed again. It leafs out again.

I wish I knew what kind of moth or butterfly emerges - something big, to judge by the size of these caterpillars when full grown. I didn't remember the part about the mockingbirds until the last minute, and thought I'd leave it out, since the mockingbird certainly complicates the story. But that's how nature is, a complicated story with lots of characters and their appetites and habits interwoven into the big picture.

The kids watched the transformation process more closely at Montessori preschool with milkweed, and with caterpillars that emerge as Monarch butterflies. And it was my oldest son, who was four or five at the time, who pointed out milkweed growing in the wild on a walk one day, and found a tiny caterpillar to show me, and told me what it would turn into. And at some later date, like at their school, we watched it happen in a jar at home.

I have to admit, I get rather attached to the caterpillar, who is there every morning, walk and munch, and who fleshes out so impressively. There's a bit of grieving when it slows to a halt and melts into something so different. The butterfly that emerges is beautiful, and such a flyer, but does not remain but a few hours before flying away. Monarch butterflies are migratory, and do a kind of relay thousands of miles long that carries them deep into Mexico at winter.

When I was a kid, it was popular to do the same sort of project at school, only watching tadpoles (which swim in ponds, streams and ditches like fish) grow legs and turn into frogs (which jump on land).

The butterflies mate in the air, the frogs at the water's edge. The females lay eggs which hatch into caterpillars and tadpoles, respectively. As long as no part of the process is interfered with, the cycle goes on and on, year after year, decade after decade, century after century.

Day before yesterday, I saw a large yellow butterfly flying in the backyard here in central Louisiana - so fast I couldn't tell what kind it was. It was beautiful, the first butterfly I've seen this spring.

Early one balmy spring morning in the late 1990s, west of Austin, Texas, I was driving into town. It was the day before Easter, and I was out to search for books. The Easter Bunny left a basket of books amidst the chocolate rabbits and sweet jelly beans in our house each year, and we helped make this happen.

I turned onto busy Highway 290. I noticed large birds flying low overhead and craned my neck to get a better view. It was a great flock, wings slowly beating as the birds spiraled above and beyond the road. I then saw a second dark wave to the right, large numbers, cresting over the juniper covered hills in a winding ribbon. The way their wings flashed white in one direction and black in the other made them look like an Escher print, such fascinating patterns, and I knew they were American White Pelicans.

I was so moved, I pulled the car to the side of the road so that I could watch. Another flock wended its way over, low and magnificent with their big wings and heavy beaks. They were weaving above and past the highway, and the car was rocking as each heavy vehicle flew by. I was stuck in the middle of a paradox, between an industrial phenomenon and a natural phenomenon happening simultaneously. Fast mechanical vehicles around me and tremendous, slow wild birds overhead. Why wasn't everybody stopping for this?

The last band of pelicans rhythmically flocked north, gaining altitude as they spiraled for the migration they were undertaking. They faded from view and I drove into town, undone with wonder.

Soup

Thanksgiving Soup is always better the second day.

1/4 medium onion, chopped
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 can of black beans
1 can of cream-style corn
a bit of water
a bit of flaked red pepper

Saute onion in a little olive oil in a soup pot. Add other ingredients. Simmer for 40 minutes, give or take. Some folks enjoy a garnish of sour cream, or shredded Romano cheese, atop each bowl or cup of soup before serving.

ode to the first tomato, June 2, 2013

among the shining green globes
still waiting their turn,
there you were
the first in red,
dangling gracefully
on the vine

(you let go
so easily)

inside the house,
a sharp clean knife
pared wedges for four.
we tasted
the warm,
tart spark
of your sun
your rain
your earth
your early blooming
among fragrant leaves
your summer
not yet come

Clams and elephants and opossums -

When I think of clams I remember a visit to a friend's family on Whidbey Island in Washington State around 1975. It was there on a stony beach that I was introduced to clamming. You brought a bucket and a shovel and walked along the shore. When you saw a thin geyser of water shooting up out of the beach (indicating a clam burrowing down into the sand), you dug as fast as you could. If you were faster than the clam, you could plop it into the bucket.

They kept the catch in a pail of fresh water for a day or two, which they said helped get rid of the gritty sand. Some have used cornmeal to fatten clams before they are cooked.

The family could tell I was not a true clammer because I was not interested in drinking the clam nectar that they all enjoyed, the liquid that remained after steaming the clams. But I am glad that I joined their family to learn about this way of obtaining food from the sea. I've read that clams were a mainstay in the diets of the indigenous peoples of the American Northwest Pacific coasts.

When I think of elephants, a couple of stories I read from National Geographic and from Smithsonian years back come to mind. One was of a domesticated elephant who painted - the brush held with her trunk. Her works included a credible red blur of urgency after a firetruck flew by, sirens screaming. She had a history of erratic behavior, and her human caretaker had given her the opportunity to paint as a way of relieving frustration and expressing herself.

The other story was of how at certain times in Africa, clans of elephants in the wild will travel long distances to one spot - was it an elephant graveyard? - meeting at the same time and place, as though for a preplanned gathering or reunion. (Perhaps they traverse the land in a line, with each elephant holding the tail of the elephant in front, as pictures sometimes show.) In the night, they dance beneath the moon, in a large circle, a kind of joyful thundering and stomping. The next day, they return to their distant homes.

I don't have many memories of possums - mostly of one rushing out of the carport when we drove in at night with the car headlights on. But, as with the elephants and clams, of late the possums have been insistently surfacing here and there - in magazines, on the net, from the primal memories of the mind.