Monday, May 23, 2016

""Oh look!" 
There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple, 
Fearless and gay as our love, 
A bluejay cocked his crest! 
Oh who can tell the range of joy 
Or set the bounds of beauty? "

from A Winter Blue Jay
by Sara Teasdale

May long weekend, Victoria Day and snow.






"She sends me news of blue jays, frost, 
 Of stars and now the harvest moon.
That rides above the stricken hill"

from A Letter From Home
by Mary Oliver

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Books





"The stories you remember feel like mirrors,
And rereading them like leafing through your life at a certain age,
As though the years were pages."

from A Private Singularity
by John Koethe

Friday, May 13, 2016




"If you asked 

the sources of his glee he would shrug  
his thick shoulders and roll his eyes  
upward to where the turning leaves  
take the wind, and the gray city birds  
dart toward their prey, and flat clouds  
pencil their obscure testaments  
on the air. For a moment  
the energy that makes them who  
they are shatters the noon’s light  
into our eyes, and when we see  
again they are gone and the street  
is quiet, the day passing into  
evening, and this is autumn"


from Salt and Oil
by Philip Levine

Saturday, May 7, 2016



Dawn, Vancouver, British Columbia

"This is not 
a photograph, it is a moment 
in the daily life of the world, 
a moment that will pass into 
the unwritten biography 
of your city or my city 
unless it is frozen in the fine print 
of our eyes.


from Salt and Oil
by Philip Levine

Sunday, May 1, 2016

A trip to visit family and friends and the new Ripley's Aquarium Of Canada, Toronto


"sun, 
split like spun 
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices— 
in and out, illuminating 

the 
turquoise sea 
of bodies. The water drives a wedge 
of iron through the iron edge 
of the cliff; whereupon the stars,"

from The Fish
by Marianne Moore














"Ancient as ocean’s shifting hills, who in sea-toils

Travelling, who furrowing the salt acres
Heavily, his wake hoary behind him,
Shoulders spouting, the fist of his forehead
Over wastes gray-green crashing, among horses unbroken
From bellowing fields, past bone-wreck of vessels,
Tide-ruin, wash of lost bodies bobbing
No longer sought for, and islands of ice gleaming
Who ravening the rank flood, wave-marshalling,
Overmastering the dark sea-marches, finds home
And harvest."

from Leviathan
by W.S. Merwin