Definition #346 Goldfinch’s Winter Coat

goldfinch lose yellow

fluff up feathers grow for warmth

male and female coats

Diane Ackerman wrote, “It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.”

Definition #318 Honor

Quenby, Mike, Annika for their 7th Wedding Anniversary

School Prayer

by Diane Ackerman

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

“School Prayer” by Diane Ackerman from I Praise My Destroyer. © Vintage Books, 2000. Reprinted with permission.