Some Things I Like

I like ocean-polished shells,
I like pine cones scattered on the path,
I like freshly felled trees — a beaver’s dinner,
I like spotting the outline of an owl
nestled in a pine tree pre-dawn,
I like watching a fox slink
down a darkened street,
I like tiny frogs camouflaged
against large pond fronds,
I like a ruby red cardinal
on a bare winter branch,
I like a rugged path opening to the sea,
I like smooth river stones
washed by clear water,
I like the surprise of a bear
standing in a meadow,
I like the quiet of a morning marsh,
I believe I was designed
to dwell in the natural world.

• This poem is modeled after the British poet Lemn Sissay’s “Some Things I Like (A Poem to Be Shouted)”. In the poem, Sissay offers a list of quirky, disparate likes. Yet in the end, Sissay’s list offers a theme — he appreciates the displaced, the discarded. As a child he went from foster home to foster home. He wrote a list that offers memoir too (poem published in Padraig O’Tuama’s Poetry Unbound).