quote, unquote

"Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail." -Theodore Dreiser

Week in the 'Dacks

Some shots from this week in the Adirondacks. Yes, there were a couple of nice sunsets. More to come...

Midday sun

Obligatory self-portrait

Ryan


Kent & canoe

Jason & Heath

Sunset story time

Forcing forsythia (revised)

An earlier draft can be found here. I'm interested in hearing from anyone who is unfamiliar with "forcing" flowering shrubs in the springtime. Is there confusion?

Forcing Forsythia

After so many years
I finally reply.

Barren seasons stretched
across all those snowy
New England winters,
hushed and swathed thick
in white and ice.
Our first words
flared fast
until I hardly remember
what cooled them.

Though I prune
short slips
carried in from the cold,
when I finally write you,
my words
are narrow gnarled stubs,
tight fists,
hardly budded.
Shuddering
after so much
raw rain.

HMMooreNiver

Great blue heron, Montezuma Wildlife Refuge

Late Afternoon, St. John
by Linda Pastan

A little blue heron has landed
on the roof.
It is as if a small angel had parked
in our lives, shielding us
briefly with its wings.
In the cove the old turtle
surfaces again; shadows
of reef fish shiver by.
On the stones chameleons
go through their wheel of colors.
Rustle of coconut fronds
combing the soft air...glitter
of passing raindrops.
Let go. Let go.
Soon the sun will plunge
into the sea dragging its plumage
of pinks and purples.
I can almost taste
the oleander, smell
the salt on your skin.
Soon we will drown
in our five exploding senses.

a good hiking poem . . . to placate me as I nurse a sprained ankle

Directions

by Billy Collins

You know the brick path in the back of the house, the one you see from the kitchen window, the one that bends around the far end of the garden where all the yellow primroses are? And you know how if you leave the path and walk into the woods you come to a heap of rocks, probably pushed down during the horrors of the Ice Age, and a grove of tall hemlocks, dark green now against the light-brown fallen leaves? And farther on, you know the small footbridge with the broken railing and if you go beyond the you arrive at the bottom of sheep's head hill? Well, if you start climbing, and you might have to grab on to a sapling when the going gets steep, you will eventually come to a long stone ridge with a border of pine trees which is a high as you can go and a good enough place to stop. The best time for this is late afternoon en the sun strobes through the columns of trees as you are hiking up, and when you find an agreeable rock to sit on, you will be able to see the light pouring down into the woods and breaking into the shapes and tones of things and you will hear nothing but a sprig of a birdsong or leafy falling of a cone or t through the trees, and if this is your day you might even spot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geese driving overhead toward some destination. But it is hard to speak of these things how the voices of light enter the body and begin to recite their stories how the earth holds us painfully against ts breast made of humus and brambles how we will soon be gone regard the entities that continue to return greener than ever, spring water flowing through a meadow and the shadows of clouds passing over the hills and the ground where we stand in the tremble of thought taking the vast outside into ourselves. Still, let me know before you set out. Come knock on my door and I will walk with you as far as the garden with one hand on your shoulder. I will even watch after you and not turn back to the house until you disappear into the crowd of maple and ash, heading up toward the hill, percing the ground with your stick.

Unexpected Action at Eve of Destruction*

*Eve of Destruction was a demolition derby night with all kinds of crazy races such as the backwards race, a school bus race, a race with campers & trailers and so on. Many things were set aflame & crushed, to the cheers of the crowd.

The sun sets on Eve of Destruction

happy birthday to poet Wendell Berry

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.