I can't sleep…
The hearse carrying the coffin of Eilidh MacLeod is driven across Traigh Mhor beach at Barra, Scotland, airport after it arrived by chartered plane. Ms. MacLeod, 14 years old, was among the 22 people who died in the terrorist attack at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester on May 22, which also left more than 100 injured. (Andrew Milligan / Photos of the Day, June 3-4, 2017, wsj.com)
National Geographic curated photos from 91 photographers, 107 stories, and 2,290,225 photographs.
Poachers killed this black rhinoceros for its horn with high-caliber bullets in South Africa’s Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park. Black rhinos number only about 5,000 today.
Don’t miss the 51 other amazing photos here: 2016 Photos of the Year.
Remember the giant whooping crane on the county highway
whose mate had been hit, stretched out dead at the center
of the road? She stood by him, wings open and flapping, shrewd
voice anxious, screaming, her dark red crown bowing in her descent
through the rim of despair. With each oncoming car she took a short
running flight to get our of the way, pacing the side of the road until
she could return to him. The next day, when still there, exhausted,
wings tattered and brown, we scraped what left of her lover
off the asphalt with a snow shovel, and laid the body on the low,
dry treadgrass by the embankment. The birds had come that July
to our swill, which had filled with monsoon rain. She stood there
close to us, in the still, yellowing grass, her interminable legs wobbling
underneath her body. The long toes of her feet twitching. That
shallow silver dish of my mind chattering, lay hold of me. Lay hold.
~ Elizabeth Jacobson,”Lay Hold of Me,” The American Poetry Review (July/August 2016)
Notes: Poem – Memory’s Landscape. Photo: Simone Sbaraglia
I walk Zeke outside.
He sniffs at the grass, at the plants, at the trace of bunny in the air.
I watch him circle the yard: It’s gone.
The vigorous flourish of the tail. The accelerated gait, his canter. All gone. In its place, the all-consuming lethargy.
The panting is incessant. His barrel chest rising and falling, a steam engine chugging, The Little Red Engine That Could: I think I can, I think I can, I think I still can.
He’s parched, always. His long tongue stretches to lap up gulps of water.
And Dad, “I’m hungry. I’m always hungry. I can’t help myself. It’s those damn white pills you wrap in the lunch meat.”
The steroid dosage has been lowered, his normal surefootedness slipping. Another stumble up the stairs this morning, his head lunging into the hardwood –and then, a soft, helpless yelp.
Water from a tap drips.
No one is ready for this. No one wants this.
This shot clock is running out.
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This morning it rained.
This afternoon it is sunny.
How is that not like the mind?
~ Michael Kewley, May all beings be happy
Sources: Quote – Some of my best friends are birds. Photo: Your Eyes Blaze Out