A SOLSTICE POEM, BY MARINA RICHIE

This winter solstice, we hope you enjoy the literary excerpt and poem contained below, graciously shared by our friend and supporter Marina Richie. Marina is a proud tree hugger, wilderness advocate, and author of Halcyon Journey, In Search of the Belted Kingfisher, winner of the 2024 John Burroughs Medal and a 2022 National Outdoor Book Award. Her articles, essays, and poetry appear in magazines, journals, blogs, and book collections. She also wrote two children’s books—Bird Feats and Bug Feats.

Marina serves on the board of directors for the Greater Hells Canyon Council and lives in Bend, Oregon. To celebrate Oregon Wild’s 50th anniversary, she contributed a blog series titled “Every Wild Place Has a Story.” She’s currently writing a book on birds as guides to the vertical realms of ancient forests. Follow her blog at www.marinarichie.com.

Words by Marina Richie

North winds whisk snowflakes across dusky blue wings skimming black waters in the quickening of December’s darkening days. Her flight drums the rough beats of leafless willow, dogwood, and cottonwood limbs bending to the will of gusts. Lifting a crested head, the belted kingfisher opens a dagger beak and sends a quiver of birdy consonants arrowing down the ice-lined river: “Kkkkkkk…kkkkkk….kkkkk!” The quickening call emanating from silence circulates warmth into freezing fingers and spins a thread of joy linking bird to river to tree to heart.

This is the time of mythic kingfishers. In the ancient Greek myth, the gods Zeus and Hera turned lovers Halcyon and Ceyx into kingfishers destined to nest annually upon the sea over the winter solstice (Saturday, December 21 in 2024). Aeolus, god of winds and father of Halcyon, calms the stormy waves for fourteen days, seven on either side of the solstice. Peace. Tranquility. Happiness. Transformation. The Halcyon Days are now.

In honor of the winter solstice and the myth, I’m sharing the poem below about our North American bird—the belted kingfisher. The poem, by me, and watercolor by Robin Coen are part of “Refugia of the Blue Mountains,” a traveling exhibit of more than 30 paintings with my accompanying prose or poetry. We created the series through the Greater Hells Canyon Council’s Wild Blues artist-in-residence, currently accepting applications through January 15, 2025.

Queen of the Imnaha Sestina

Hovering above Imnaha pooling below a log jam
Kingfisher is the whirled wind of river pulse,
held breath of ponderosa before the exhale,
Wings flapping, tail flaring, head steady in the rock and roll,
eyes of polished black night locked on her starry prey,
a tiny trout streaking a comet’s tail.

Imnaha twists and shimmies. Slaps her scaled tail
flowing from Wallowas hummed in huckleberry jam.
Wolves howling above Blue Hole, a haven for prey.
Chinook salmon lulled in Imnaha belly by slowing pulse
before river quickens from deep cleft to riffled roll,
breathing life upon salmon eggs waiting to exhale.

Kingfisher dives, beak a spear aiming for finned prey.
Sideslipping between air and water like a swift exhale
as a line of elk track a meadow renewed by fire’s pulse.
Bugling bulls clash antlers. Trotting fox waves brushy tail.
Will silvery trout escape from his pickle, his jam?
Will kingfisher clasp the fish like a buttered roll?

Black bear catches a whiff of berries ripening to jam
breezed by Imnaha, sweetened by autumnal pulse
when pine squirrels gather cones from trees in exhale,
and sun slants low over jade river stones on a roll.
Rhythm of spawning salmon gifting the forest in prey.
Kingfisher thwacking the trout, still waving his tail.

Cumulonimbus clouds over peaks rumble a drumroll.
Wolf pack tracks musky scent of cloven-hooved prey.
Gusting wind flings heart-shaped cottonwood leaves to jam
in a golden raft spinning downriver. Lightning a jagged exhale
as black bear trundling under spruce snags a bobbed tail.
Curls up to wait out the storm’s racing pulse.

River becomes raven pluming over underwater prey,
caddis, mayfly, and dragonfly larvae before winged exhale
Raindrops smack water. Lightning the electric pulse
of salmon, of wolf, of river outracing her tail
to the confluence with the Snake free from the jam
of concrete dams. Hells Canyon saved by a roll

not of lucky dice but a collective gathered pulse.
People overcoming every jam. Never turning tail.
Knowing when to hover, howl, bugle, and exhale.