Prologue:

During the lockdown months of the pandemic I was involved in an online book study where we were reading the book All We Can Save. This is a pretty fabulous book on feminism and climate science and each chapter has poetry, art and essays embedded. I remember one meeting when the facilitator on Zoom said, “I’m a science person and not really a poetry person…does somebody else mind reading this poem for us?” I remember this statement bristling me a bit. In STEM education we tend to advocate for everyone seeing themselves as “math people” and “science people”. So I found it odd that it was acceptable to verbalize that it is ok to not be a poetry person….especially as someone who has always loved poetry myself.

Driving Through Farmland

I live in Pierce County in Washington state. Tucked away in the small town of Buckley is one of the best coffee shops I’ve been to- better than most of the spots in Tacoma or Seattle. It’s called Anchor House and I try to visit every week or so. I like to drive through the back roads that cut through the farmlands on my way to get my coffee fix. The landscape always reminds me of the potato farms in Wisconsin where my grandmother lived. The smell of manure, the way the land is carved up, the sporadic houses surrounded by farmland, the live stock, the road signs, the machinery, the trucks…and then I’m snapped back to reality when I see the snow-covered foothills and Mt. Rainier in the background. The horizon is pretty flat in Wisconsin.

Recently I was on one of my back road travels when I witnessed a bald eagle exiting a stand of trees with a group of crows in hot pursuit. This scene stuck with me in such a way that when I arrived at Anchor House- and settled in with my latte in hand- I quickly abandoned my original plan of getting some grading done and instead started to write a poem about the eagle, the crows, and the trees. Below is that poem.

The Escape