Feral Friends,

As long as the earth has spun her way around the sun there has been Samhain, Sauin — in any case pronounced sah-win to mark the halfway point between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. As she rounds herself round the primal tide within the cell of every living thing desires the moon, this year to our eyes less than half but nonetheless always full. And so it is for the lovers of moons and juncos, russet rustles and the lingering of crickets, just one more time turtles belly-up logs on a thin afternoon under low-slung sun, looping buteos, stripping canopies showing off muscles. We can almost believe that we spin this orb under our feet with just the right poem, October at our backs, the weight of an eyelid on the cloudy horizon and a path that turns us ever wilder.

Love November in the woods,

Jack Phillips

_{Photos: Loess Hills Saunter by Kristin Zahra. Poets under Grandmother Oak by someone using Kristin’s phone.}

Feral Friends,

Funny how close you can get to a turtle in a canoe, as those who might eat them tend to approach from above or below. Perhaps in silence — save for the reading of a poem by Natalie Diaz or one of our own composing — we move as tracelessly as the passing of days. The planetary impress of human presence grows ever heavier, but those that dip lightly in lyric and paddle write the lines of kinship. Or maybe we remind them of a distant cousin they knew so long, long ago. 

Welcome the Equinox in quiet awe. Turn off your phone.

Jack Phillips

Turtles by Kristin Zahra, poets by Jack using Kristin’s phone.

Wild Friends, 

You may have heard that a small group of poets have been keeping Sunday morning vigil by a recently-poisoned pond to witness her recovery. 

She is coming around slowly. Our friends Emily and Angelica scooped a wee serpent from the muddy edge. The summerling Thamnophis radix tried to make tough but we loved that little one even more – inspiring us instead of instilling fear. This small act of defiance helped us feel better about the pond or at least, more hopeful. 

Let the little ones show us the way.

– Jack Phillips

_{Photos by Emily Anderson, August 14th in Fremont County, Iowa.}

Wild friends,

A favorite pond breeds the world’s smallest flowering plants and Iowa’s smallest frogs. Duckweeds (family Lemnoideae) look like wee lily pads and it takes a whole bunch of them to hold a baby frog of the family Hylidae. Blanchard’s cricket frog, Acris blanchardii (photo above) is listed as endangered in surrounding states, but we are blessed with plenty right here. Tiny hylids and the diminutive duckweeds that support them enliven our waters and are vital to our ecosystems. And of course to mindful pond-seers as they bring us closer, grow our little devotion.

Love little,

Jack Phillips

thenaturalistschool@gmail.com

_{Photo by Courtney Stormberg}

Unaware of living she simply lives and lusting only for fragrance and the vagrancy of desire, arches her back. 

We love to write flash poetry — sometimes called micropoems — because they carry the rawness of a hungry bee on a blurry thistle, a brief breeze on a humid morning. When you write one it sharpens the moment and when you read it later it takes you back. You can share it like a photo on your phone and maybe next time your friends will join us in a wet meadow.

*Photos by Kristin Zahra, poem by Jack Phillips.

Feral friends,

After three days of mycologizing and botanizing with our visiting scientist Kathleen Thompson (UW-Madison) and an occasional break to read Rilke, we arranged ourselves on early morning logs to write poetry under a canopy of tanagers and buntings. Our Sunday poet Joelle Sandfort prompted us to write with speechless awe. In these Iowa sugar-clay woods, how could we do otherwise? 

Find a beauty so deep.

– Jack Phillips

Hard to follow a warbler in these woods harder even so to write one. Still yourself on a log when the other poets have settled in blink and slide your eyes after canopy flits  

        – flit   –    twitter     

                                                                           twit

                                                          chip                                                             twee-

t 

                                                                                                    peeps

                                      just                                 the                                                           wa

y

           th

ey                                                                                 do

                   mo                             ve                                                  bounce,                                       and 

                                   be.  

_{*Yellow-rumped warbler in Cass County, Iowa on May 1st. Photo by Troy Soderberg. Prose poem by Jack Phillips.}                       

Feral Friends,

We are devoted to Hylidae even in winter the family we belong to in dreams their trills and crikkity-tik-tik webbing our brains with sweet oozing or maybe just me. Frigid releases of greenish meter duckweed lines jumps and syllables froggishly comes the blank page, vernal murmurs fixed underfoot an equinox prelude, pond-ice tunes the chorus soon to come.

This could be the weekend. Get to a muddy place, still your soul, listen for winter tree frogs.

Jack Phillips

_{Blanchard’s cricket frog (Acris blanchardi) in late winter, Fremont County, Iowa — one of the earliest spring singers. Photo by Robert Smith. Top: Wild poets listening to tuning-ice during the March thaw. Photo: Billie Shelton.}

Feral Friends,

The Hunger Moon. Some poets prefer Snow Moon to better wrap emptiness in a happy blanket but winter before dawn fills love with longing a thousand glassy eyes keep watch, hands open stiffly for promised blessings grayscale earth awaits her blush, desperately grateful to answer their stirring bellies. Hunger is more reliable.

But I want a better name for the opening of fleshy passions the blazing spores of longering days for the fires of fatter mornings, colors of fungal elfen cups impatiently bathing faeries earthen rubies to meet her luny gaze, by virtue of poetic vagrancy, the Sarcoscypha Moon. 

Opening now.

Jack Phillips. 

Photos by Becky Colgrove and Robert Smith.