Dear Stella
Frank Newell "God's Wild Creatures" - Music by Stefanie Drexler
God's Wild Creatures
Poem by Frank Newell
A coon and a frog, and a possum on a log.
A duck and a goose, a bobcat on the loose.
A deer and an owl and a fox on the prowl.
A quail and a dove, a turkey gobbler in love.
A squirrel and a hare, and a hawk in the air.
A wasp and a bee, a hornet nest in a tree.
God's wild creatures everywhere.
A tiny little mouse and a great big bear.
He made some big and he made some small, but
He made the little bluebird prettiest of them all.
Poem by Frank Newell
Music & Vocals by Stefanie Drexler (vocals@stefaniedrexler.com)
Song dedicated to Donna Bishop đâ¨
_________________________
"The poem
My job as a wildlife specialist with the Federal Wildlife Service, from which I recently retired, required me to spend most of my time working alone in swamps, forests, riverbanks, and a variety of other wild habitats in daylight and the darkness of night. I felt comfortable alone in far out, lonely places with only the wild creatures and me. Without knowing or realizing it, I gradually became addicted to the peace, quiet and serenity required by nature's wild things living wild and free, indebted to no one, not knowing anger, jealously, revenge or sin. Like the wild creatures, I could sit motionless for hours, nothing moving but my eyes. I worked countless unpaid overtime hours simply because I hated to leave the peaceful world of the wild animals and return to the noise, hustle and stress of human life.
My wife, Peggy, hit the nail on the head one time when we went out to eat dinner at a restaurant. The place was crowded and noisy. People were talking loudly back and forth, laughing, shouting, and smoking. Peggy looked at me and saw that I had my back against the wall, my eyes were focused on the door and drops of cold sweat were trickling down both sides of my face. She said, "Frank, you spend so much of your time alone in the woods and swamps that you have gotten so you don't want to be around people." To me, every day that I spent alone in the wild habitat was special.
On one such special day, in the late spring and around 10 a.m., I sat down on one end of an ancient cottonwood tree long ago blown over in a storm and lying across a medium size creek. Wildlife and wildlife tracks and other signs were all around me, and I thought to myself that I will see more wildlife today than most people will see in years.
On a sand bar in the middle of the creek I saw the tracks of a black bear, raccoon and bobcat. As I sat there, an old blackjack 'possum came out of a hollow on the log's other end and began to lap water from the creek. He startled a bullfrog that jumped from the creek bank into the safety of deep water. Off in the distance upstream, I heard a wild turkey gobble four times. In the same general area I also heard a bobwhite quail whistle and the lonesome call of a mourning dove.
I watched a squirrel run up to the top of a sycamore tree on my side of the creek and jump onto the top limb of a maple on the other side. Something in the air caught me eye. A red tail hawk was circling silently overhead. That squirrel had better be careful. As I scanned the far bank, I spotted a cottontail rabbit sitting snug in a clump of swamp grass. Way downstream, I heard a gentle splashing of water and looked to see a whitetail deer wading across the creek. Couldn't tell if it was a buck or doe because it was the time of year that bucks had shed their antlers.
A gentle breeze had been moving the reeds and leaves, and suddenly it calmed down. That's when, close by in a stand of hardwoods, a great horned owl pierced the stillness with its deep hooting followed by the turkey gobbler giving answer. A honeybee lit on the edge of the sandbar to drink water, followed by a black wasp.
I stood up, walked off the log and continued downstream. I hadn't gone far when I startled a Canada goose and a wood duck swimming on a beaver pond. A little farther on down, I saw a huge hornet nest hanging from a limb of a sweet gum tree. Later I quietly watched a red fox digging for a wood mouse at the bottom of a rotten tree stump.
Turning in my driveway at the end of a long day, I stopped to check several bluebird houses and found nests, eggs or baby bluebirds in all of them. It had been a good day.
That night, as I lay in bed waiting for sleep to come, I made a mental inventory of all the wild animals that I had seen that day. I was off duty the next day, and I took a little time to write a little poem about them. I entitled it "God's Wild Creatures."
Source: https://www.warrenrecord.com/opinion/article_0fd197e8-ea84-11e7-ba66-5b7e4804191f.html
Frank Newell's Legacy: Eastern Bluebird Rescue Group https://www.easternbluebirdrescue.org/frank.htm
