To continue my poet Mary Oliver* theme: which is my work which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished….I forget how to do this simple task but Youngest- Grandson-not-quite-two reteaches me…..astonished each time he visits at the goldfish in the pond, wanting to feed them, wanting to smell the fish food over and over, never tiring of either, wanting to put leaf hats on the little fat stone buddha’s head, saying hat each time, waiting for the carpenter bees, saying bee loudly when we see one, wanting me to sing yet again, be my little baby bumble bee, calling mosquitoes bees and laughing like mad when I correct him and say, mosquito, mosquito…..it’s the same thing each and every time…..my simple treasures are a miracle to him, and I am reminded anew–as the significance of this anniversary day points out–what treasures I possess**…..
Another treasure: the garden muse allowed a prose/poem to burble up. It had been so long I’d forgotten I did this…..had an attack of inspiration. Here it is: A small kamakasi hurtles toward me, wings fluttering in rapid beats. No rising sun on the side, this small missile is nonetheless intent, zooming toward the next feeder…..
Details: I saw my first hummingbird (I’m trying to lure them with feeders) on Tuesday and almost didn’t recognize what it was until it was a foot away. Two days later, I’m seating at an Archway Gallery reading, 
listening, and there the words are. I scribble them on the paper listing the readers.
So….what’s inspired you lately?
*Hit this to hear Mary Oliver read…..**Hit above on words treasures I possess to hear treasure……
Karleen Koen — writing life 
the collage is gorgeous. Is it yours?
They named him Jerky and I am suspicious of the reason. When I looked at the veterinarian’s report I saw that the filly he had run away with had died without a name. Hit by a car. No one knew he had been hit as well until the lady who had driven the car came to the farm to inquire how the ‘other horse’ was doing Somehow Jerky had stumbled back to his pasture with a shattered knee. inoperable according to the vet. making him unrideable. So the farm sent him to auction, a baby, with 23 other unwanted horses. As an unrideable gelding there wasn’t much hope he would be purchased by anyone other than the slaughterhouse.
Seventeen horses were purchased from the killpen by a rescue group who planned to transport them to a horse sanctuary in Ohio. They looked the horses over and decided that little Jerky was unadoptable, would not be going to Ohio but euthanized . Not so fast. When the horse hauler arrived to transport the first group of horses to Ohio, Jerky somehow knocked the identifying auction number off of his behind and ran up the ramp and walked into a stall. When he was unloaded in Ohio and placed into a pasture, he tore around like he was Secretariat running the Kentucky Derby. In the dead of winter, severly malnourished and in poor physical condition.
In MIchigan a few weeks later, I was looking for a pony to adopt. One of the rescue team asked me to consider Jerky instead, She was worried about his health. She said he was depressed. He lived outside without shelter, without a blanket and it had been a very cold winter. She sent me his picture and I was horrified. He looked 30 years old instead of the baby he was.
Now he is three and I am inspired each time I see him because his young life was so fraught with misery and he managed to make it all turn out right and still be as sweet as pie in nature.. I renamed him Journey.