O lonely, lonely sky and sea —
Where time is a wind that plays between,
Blowing the colored centuries by,
Tiny tragedies, quaint and mean —
Why are you waiting? What have you heard?
What majestic thing have you known,
That you watch each other, listening,
So long, so long alone?
~Marjorie Meeker, ‘Lonely Sky and Sea’ (1922)
photo: a cold January day in 2006, among the backwaters of the Ohio River just above the Mississippi, in a wetlands which attracts countless species of flying visitors as they make their way along the larger flyway north and south, according to the seasons.