For Refuge

by Mike Shuler

Photo by David Hargreaves

For Refuge

         Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge
 
I walk the trails on rounded hills
Through savannah oaks above the slough
Where low sky fills with circling birds
And life completes for dusky geese
For raptors and their prey in fields
For Queen Anne’s white and Fender’s blue
For herons feeding near shoreline green
For towhees flitting from shadow to light
For black-tailed deer blending to earth
For words emerging and shaping to verse

Mike

Mike Shuler is a retired educator and psychologist who has visited Baskett Slough many times during the past fifty years. He was the first editor of Northwest Passage, Western Oregon University’s student literary magazine. His chapbook, Words on Wind, was published in 2015.