Saturday, August 16, 2014


"Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate from the bridge it covers."
from Monet Refuses the Operation
by Lisel Mueller
   We arrived at the cabin a couple of days ago. 
These photos were taken by the trail camera attached
to the post by the porch steps. The bear appears for
several days after we left then nothing.





“ ...If there is to be a poet in these modern times,
he must go out for himself and must gain much
wisdom. He must look deeply into the world,
and far into time, even though he sees both the
world and time from some little microcosm like
Sheep Rock Spring.”

                                                from Sheep Rock
                                                        by  George R. Stewart,

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

  
   "I love the way the light falls over the suburbs
Late on these summer evenings, as the buried minds
Stir in their graves, the hearts swell in the warm earth
And the soul settles from the air into its human home.
This is where the prodigal began, and now his day is ending
In a great dream of contentment, where all night long
The children sleep within tomorrow’s peaceful arms
And the past is still,"


from  In The Park
by John Koethe

Walking the dogs thru the neighborhood or cutting
roses in the garden in the summer reminds me of
childhood summers with their green lawns, gentle
breezes and almost endless twilight. 

The passages in these poems spoke to those feelings and if
Koethe later changes the mood of his poem with the
habitual, pessimistic, qualifications I find frustrating in
his work, for me the (lovely) damage was already done
and I chose to focus on the evening light, the stillness and
the children asleep in tomorrow's peaceful arms.

the Garden






the Pond





As someone nearing 60 who still has my childhood
copy of Black Beauty. how could I not include this stanza
from Stafford's poem.



"Animals that knew the way to Heaven
wagged at the back doors of every house
when I was young, and horses told fences
the story of Black Beauty, and smelled of the good manger."

from When I Was Young
by William Stafford