One thing the hand of Time shall spare, For the grim Idiot at the gate Is deathless and eternal there.

"cattle and horses browsed around

derricks and pumps.

I braked the car when a mare and colt

wandered onto the road.

They stared at me, and I thought,

here is the past, looking at the present.

Then I remembered that grass will come up

when the wells are stuttering straws

in an empty bottle."

from Meeting on Asphalt

by Bert Alnon

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alta-oilsands-monitoring-1.5673433

The deal says no fieldwork is to be done on the main branch of the Athabasca River. That means the program won't fund monitoring downstream of the oilsands even as the province considers proposals to allow the water from oilsands tailings ponds to be released into the river.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/alberta-nwt-chiefs-losing-faith-environment-monitoring-1.5674446

Subject line is from Archibald Lampman's "The City at the End of Things"

Today two Canadian poetry books came by mail, roses from the garden, Mexican food and cake later

Roses picked from the garden this afternoon, the yellow is a Bill Reid

the two peach are Olds College Roses and the pink is an explorer rose

I think a John Davis.

Two poetry books that came in the mail today. 

The Pratt was a gift in 1927.

This is the first page of "Farewell to Winnipeg" from 

Deeper into the Forest  by Roy Daniels, 1948.

Dorothy, Alberrta

"With the maps lost, the voyages

Cancelled by legislation years ago,

This is become a territory without name."

from NOT THE SWEET CICELY OF GERARDES HERBALL

by Margaret Avison

On a walk thru the neighbourhood

"Caught                              

           pressed into words

                                                made crazy with colour"

       from MOMENTS ARE MONUMENTS

           by Phyllis Webb

Tree Swallow at the farm and the open road

"Live with me on Earth among red berries and the bluebirds
And leafy young twigs whispering
Within such little spaces, between such floors of green, such
     figures in the clouds
That two of us could fill our lives with delicate wanting:"

from Live with me on earth under the invisible daylight moon

by Milton Acorn

Red Tail

" Is the soul solid, like iron?

Or is it tender and breakable, like

the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?"

from Some Questions You Might Ask

by Mary Oliver

The farm

   “I farm a little plot of things to say, with not much frontage on the busy road.”

     —Ted Kooser journal entry, December 7, 1972