“Wren” by Marnie Crowell ’60

John James Audubon, Marsh Wren (from The Birds of America), 1830, engraving on paper. Bequest of Charlotte Stephenson Oresman ’41, in memory of her mother, Elizabeth Jackson Stephenson, Class of 1907, in honor of her sister, Mabel Stephenson Haemmel ’46, 1979. Collection of the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, founded as Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.

after John James Audubon’s Marsh Wren

One small white flower

In the dark of a spruce shadow

dreams itself a wren

Marnie Crowell is a member of the Randolph-Macon Woman’s College Class of 1960, and received an MS in Biology from University of Pennsylvania. As a natural history writer her works have appeared in numerous magazines such as Audubon, Natural History, Readers Digest, and Redbook. Her books include Greener Pastures; Great Blue, Odyssey of a Heron; Flycasting for Everyone; Beads and String-A Maine Island Pilgrimage, and several Quick Key nature guides for Deer Isle, Maine. Long active in The Nature Conservancy and Island Heritage Trust, she says, “The arts speak for the environment, and the environment is the lamp in which the miracle of life glows.”