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Praise the Refuge
Kate Gray wrote an amazing poem to wrap up events on July 19th, and we wanted to include it here for your reading pleasure.
Kate Gray's passion is being a teacher, a writing coach, and a volunteer writing facilitator with women inmates, houseless, and Veterans. She is the author of three poetry collections and a novel, Carry the Sky. For more information, go to kategraywrites.com.
Praise the Refuge
Praise the morning sky rippling
over ripe blackberries, thimbleberries, Oregon grape,
over reedgrass, sloughgrass, and wildrye. Praise the treefrog clinging
to a leaftip, the dragonfly’s blue flight, the long-toed salamander,
the rough-skinned newt, the slug’s slithering.
Hail the Great Blue Heron snatching
a garter snake, the Bittern hiding
in the Alder, the Cedar Waxwing bursting
a red currant, the swallow
feeding its brood in a White Oak hole. Praise the Flicker
picking the willow, cottonwood, choke cherry. Praise resident
Robins, Chickadees and Bushtits hopping
in kinnikinnick, the Kestrils, the Killdeer and their heartbreaking cry,
the Coots, Gadwalls and Mallards, Bald Eagles snatching
Salmon. Praise the Cormorant, its aquatic acrobatics,
the Grebe and its elegant neck, the Nuthatch, its upside down
creeping, the Sparrow its chipping, the Redwing Blackbird
and the Kingfisher, their clamor.
Praise the visiting Snow Geese, Tundra Swans, the Trumpeters.
Praise the Cinnamon Teal cackling, the Lazuli Bunting, all flashy
and bright. Praise the Osprey, Gray Ghost, the Canada Geese, all sizes
and sounds, the Vultures, Widgeons, Pintails and Scaups.
Bless the Bufflehead and Mergansers.
For Roosevelt elk and black-tailed deer, for skunk, weasel, raccoon, red
fox, for river otter with their bellies set for breakfast, for beaver dragging
the downed limbs across Lake River, for deer mouse and vole, the orange
teeth of nutria, for ground and gray squirrel, for cottontail and shrew,
for coyotes howling when Sandhill Cranes line the sky at sunset, sing praise.
Praise the people who shelter the wild, plant grasses, weed
the invasives. Praise the First People, the Chinook, and all who live
like rivers, flowing and planting, hunting and harvesting, giving
and getting in balance. Praise all the people who preserve this Earth.
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The Service is working with community partners to cultivate young leaders and to provide clear pathways for the next generation of diverse leaders in environmental education and conservation. 
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whether you are planning a long or a short visit, it is going to be a hot summer and there is no access to drinking water on the refuge.
