" It is a winter's tale
That the snow blind twilight ferries over the lakes
And floating fields from the farm in the cup of the vales,
Gliding windless through the hand folded flakes,
The pale breath of cattle at the stealthy sail,

And the stars falling cold,
And the smell of hay in the snow, and the far owl
Warning among the folds, and the frozen hold
Flocked with the sheep white smoke of the farm house cowl
In the river wended vales where the tale was told. "

from A Winter's Tale

Dylan Thomas

More from the farm.

                                       

"When for too long I don't go deep enough
into the woods to see them, they begin to
enter my dreams. Yes, there they are, in the
pinewoods of my inner life. I want to live a life
full of modesty and praise. Each hoof of each
animal makes the sign of a heart as it touches
then lifts away from the ground. Unless you
believe that heaven is very near, how will you

find it?"

from The Faces of Deer

Mary Oliver

" Now do U understand what heaven is

it is the surround of the living"

                                             The Changing Light at Sandover

                                                          James Merrill

"In the small beauty of the forest

The wild deer bedding down—

That they are there!

                              Their eyes

Effortless, the soft lips

Nuzzle and the alien small teeth

Tear at the grass

                              The roots of it

Dangle from their mouths

Scattering earth in the strange woods.

They who are there."

from George Oppen

           Psalm

We were able to get out to the farm over 

Christmas but a mixture of lots of snow, very 

cold temperature and the colds we brought 

with us meant we did not drop by the cabin and 

I did not get as many good photos as I had hoped.

However we did get in lots of visiting and  saw

the family so that was good.

Deer were abundant  this year their trails running

thru the garden across the lane and over to where

Ralph has stacked his bails. They were making great

headway in ripping them apart and you could see 

deer passing back and forth from the windows.

"Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one
that your life conceals, the one waiting outside
when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at
in her crochet design, the one almost found
over at the edge of the music, after the sermon."

from The Gift

                                  William Stafford

"then when you're quite dressed

you'll stand in the window for everyone to see

and how they'll stare!

oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands

and looking up at our beautiful tree

we'll dance and sing

"Noel Noel" "

 

       From [little tree]

        E.E. CUMMINGS

 

 

From my family to yours all the best for the holidays.

 

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

“Now they are all on their knees,”

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve,

“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,”

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

 

 

The Oxen

                       Thomas Hardy

 

"I dream an inescapable dream
in which I take away from the country
the bridges and roads, the fences, the strung wires,
ourselves, all we have built and dug and hollowed out,
our flocks and herds, our droves of machines.

     I restore then the wide-branching trees.
I see growing over the land and shading it
the great trunks and crowns of the first forest.
I am aware of the rattling of their branches,
the lichened channels of their bark, the saps
of the ground flowing upward to their darkness.
Like the afterimage of a light that only by not
looking can be seen, I glimpse the country as it was.
All its beings belong wholly to it.  They flourish
in dying as in being born.  It is the life of its deaths."

                                                                              from The Dream
                                                                                    Wendell Berry

As often happens when bad weather and lassitude

combine to keep me in, I fall back on the denizens of 

my backyard feeders for my photographic subjects. 

The Downy woodpecker was a nice change as all to often

I am left with a few native birds and a host of introduced species.

I felt the poetry fragment from Berry and my own poem make

nice bookends for this themecontrast. While I would like to see the 

world of the Plains Grizzly, the vast herds of Bison and Pronghorn 

or even further back the Dire Wolf, Sabretooth and 

Short Faced Bear I am not sure that world would like me.

So sparrows it is.

 

Eye, Fly, Awry in this Landscape of Words,


They say don’t feed the birds, you encourage
dependence, promote non-native species.
who knew, it seemed such a harmless lark.

And what is the result of my two week vacation,
starvation throughout Brentwood stretching to
Dalhousie and Charlewood, or is it more widespread.

They do fly after all and we go through a lot of seed,
will they be dropping in Shanghai and Topeka,
and if not mass starvation, perhaps delinquency.

The whole of bird society breaking down, begging,
sexual license, belling cats, downing power lines
pushing each other into the air intakes of jets.

Or could it be positive, native species returning
Bluebirds, Martins sundry Warblers all jostling
wildly for the vacant nesting boxes and bird baths.

Maybe we should think big, Passenger Pigeons,
Carolina Parakeets, Labrador Ducks, who knows
what these misplaced Weaver Birds were up to.
 
Maybe we will see the great brown spurts of Bison
moving out of the river valleys with their attendant
packs of Grey Wolves and lumbering Plains Grizzlies.

And if I stop feeding the sleek Black Squirrels
that hang like misshapen fruit from my feeders,
what can I get for that?

                                                     Guy

"Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.

My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.

I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,

Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark."

                         from Beyond the Red River

                                      Thomas McGrath

We have had a cold week,  for much of the time the 

temperature was in the high minus 20 Celsius range 

with a wind chill some 10 degrees colder. As bit warmer 

today, but for most of the week the view out the window

showed puffed up birds and frost wrapped trees. I did put

up some Christmas lights today. The show must go on.

 "Thus having prepared their buds

against a sure winter

the wise trees

stand sleeping in the cold."

                  from Winter Trees

                              William Carlos Williams

"I thought of you in the sweet 

South; and the wind at the window was only

A warm breeze to melt the icicles of sleep."

from A Window on the North

R. A. D. Ford

Yesterday as expected we got our blizzard

not a huge amount of snow, but high wind 

chills with lots of drifting snow, mayhem 

and confusion. Today it was still cold -14 c 

at lunch with the sun showing blue and red 

thru a cloudy sky. I saw only one magpie and 

two jackrabbits that wanted no part of photos.

"Else winter reigns throughout the self

                            and we become

more barren than the nest

that sways within a winter wind."

from Winterkill

      D. G. Jones

       "snow

the day shut down like Napoleon

at Moscow

a day for art

the marvel of flight and of stillness

commotion and silence"

                                    War and Peace

                                                D. G. Jones

I have combined a bit of travel for work and the winter 

blahs as an excuse for no taking many photos or blogging.

We currently have a blizzard warning here so I thought

I would offer some photos of the flames of October and a 

poem I wrote some years ago while on a another work 

related bus trip through a winter landscape.

On a Bus Headed North

20 below, everything fades to white,

fields stretch to a white horizon

each tree, woodlot is rimmed in frost

and the white non-light still holds

against an unseen dawn.

On the snow mantled farm the

red buildings bleed to rose,

the yard light shines like a grounded star,

and if I could stop and walk

up the long path, pass the granaries,

the black on white piano key

repetition of fence posts,

would I be a mysterious guest

a magi, or merely home?

But we continue north to a grey,

shuttered city, waiting for spring to come

and open it like a can.

         Guy