Metaphors

I've been kicking this one around between my ears for a couple weeks.

METAPHORS for ...???

• Black and Blue: The Black-throated Blue Warbler is much more desired than a psyche that feels "black and blue." Up on Mission Hill near Brimley, Michigan one can look down across the treetops to behold these beauties singing at eye level with the vista of Spectacle and Monocle Lakes and the greatest lake of all, Lake Superior, as the background

• In the Shadows: This female Spruce Grouse is looking mighty plump. I suspect she's got some babes in her belly. She works the shadows quite eloquently. Having spent 30+ years navigating the maze of two tracks in Luce and Chippewa Counties in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I've become fairly adept at finding this species. Though the Duck Lake fire certainly took its toll on a few haunts where I historically had found this species.

• Curled Up and Dying: Rain on foliage always strikes me as poetically sad and yet beautiful, doubly so on this corpse leaf.

• Dead But Still Standing: I lobbied to save this old white pine after the fire at our cabin. Sadly it started showing signs of its demise last summer. Now it is all but dead, poised majestically, naked, while its insides are being gutted by beetles. Soon it will be felled and swallowed by the lake.

• Stuck in a Web: Or maybe in the case of these water droplets, cushioned by a web.