With Silver Claws and Silver Eye

This December we began the month with a full moon (Dec. 1) and we will end it on a full moon (Dec. 30).  A little lunar cheer to ring in the New Year for any holiday revelers trying to find their way home.

I was on an explore out at the farm last weekend, trying to find the beaver dam that has been transforming the landscape of the east end of the property the past couple of years.  it wasn’t hard to find, a massive structure nearly 3 feet high and over 75 feet long.   They have been busy.  From their perspective (the beavers), it couldn’t be a more perfect placement, right on a fence line between a public wildlife reserve and private property, its unclear who if anyone but the beavers have jurisdiction over these change in events.   Talking to a neighbor whose back third of his property is now underwater, he said, “One the one hand I’ve lost a big chunk of the land I used to bow hunt, on the other, the beavers have done more in 2 years than Ducks Unlimited did in 30 in creating wood duck habitat.” My intuition says the beavers and the wood ducks have won and we’ll all have to just get used to water being where it never was before.

Silver

By Walter de la Mare

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.