Demure in your outworn attire,
You blend discretely in the group,
Shrug off the schoolyard taunts and skipping rope.
Endure instead the numbing chores, domestic care,
’Till you can stealthily escape.

Snakes and spiders, finches, ferns:
Myriad forms reticulate.
A miracle
Unfathomable,
Varieties
Innumerable.
From finger tips, to boughs leaf-spread,
Up groove-worn hills, you comprehend
An order ineluctable.

With inexhaustible resource,
Your publications earn renown,
Advance despite the duties in your home;
Implacable as gravity, from inland course,
Flow to the intertidal zone.

Worms and molluscs, pelicans:
Myriad forms reticulate.
A miracle
Unfathomable,
Varieties
Innumerable.

Crabs eat shad roe, Shad eat crabs:
Myriad forms reticulate.
A miracle
Unfathomable,
Reciprocal
Reverberating
Enfolded circularity
Sustains essential synergy.
From watershed to tidal pond,
The life contained, together bound:
One interwoven family.