By William Butler Yeats

Call down the hawk from the air;
Let him be hooded or caged
Till the yellow eye has grown mild,
For larder and spit are bare,
The old cook enraged,
The scullion gone wild.

I will not be clapped in a hood,
Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist,
Now I have learnt to be proud
Hovering over the wood
In the broken mist
Or tumbling cloud.

What tumbling cloud did you cleave,
Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind,
Last evening? that I, who had sat
Dumbfounded before a knave,
Should give to my friend.

By Robert Louis Stevenson

The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;
She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
On streets and fields and harbour quays,
And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.

The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,
The howling dog by the door of the house,
The bat that lies in bed at noon,
All love to be out by the light of the moon.

But all of the things that belong to the day
Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way;
And flowers and children close their eyes
Till up in the morning the sun shall arise.

At the end of the first day of my solo tour of Finland’s National Parks, I drove from Puurijarvi-Isosuo National Park, a little south to Kurjenrahka National Park. Although the days are long in Finland during the summer, I only had limited time to explore one of the many trails of Kurjenrahka, and I chose the short 2 km Karpalopolku circle trail that began near the Kurjenpesä nature hut.

The trail meandered through pine forest, skirting the edge of the mire, the bright green of it shining through the trunks of the trees in the late afternoon sun. The path led through an open grassy meadow with birch trees, towered over by pines, creating an enclosed space, before moving back into the forest. At the end of the trail, I…

British Columbians! Lift up a chorus!
To greet the arrival of Cadborosaurus!
He may have been here quite a long time before us,
But he’s shy and don’t stay round too long, so’s to bore us.
Cadborosaurus! Cadborosaurus!
Come up and see us again, you old war ‘oss!

Letter to the Victoria Daily Times from I. Vacedun

It was 5:30 in the evening, the end of a rainy day in Seattle and I was driving north along Lake Washington by Seward Park. I always look out to the water to see if I can spot the local beaver or maybe a passing otter, but that day, near the entrance of Andrew’s Bay I saw something completely different in the dark grayish blue water. The lake wasn’t rough, but it created ripples, the kind that constantly play with the mind – was that a…

This week isn’t actually a poem, but a song from Tove Jansson’s Moomin books from my favorite character, Snufkin.

“I meander through the forests in the early spring when Nature is putting on her greatest show. Under limpid blue skies and clouds so white and striking, the earth breathes and emerges from beneath the snow. I wander where I will and I will be the one to choose. I’ll play my harp all night and day, or not if it feels wrong. Nothing do I own, so there’s nothing I can lose. I need to have the freedom to find my own song.

I sing a beautiful ode to a babbling brook and the moon will hear the language of quietness. The strings of my harp will snare birds…

When a couple of Twitter friends met in Bali recently to search for invertebrates together, I was naturally overcome with jealousy missing out on their fun adventures finding nudibranchs and all kinds of fascinating insects. We decided that since all of us invertebrate geeks couldn’t get together in person to search for spineless creatures, we’d do it remotely. So Maureen Berg, Franz Anthony and I created #InverteFest, a time when we could all go on an invertebrate hunt wherever we were in the world and share what we found on Twitter. We invited everyone to join in on the weekend of September 28th and were overwhelmed by the response.