" Midway in the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood, 

for the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard it is to tell what 

that wood was, wild, rugged, harsh; the very thought of it renews 

the fear! It is so bitter that death is hardly more so. But, 

to treat of the good that I found in it, I will tell of the other things I saw 

there. I cannot rightly say how I entered it, I was so full of sleep

 at the moment I left the true way; "

Dante Inferno Canto One Singleton translation

I have been reading about Dante's Divine Comedy and it's effect on future

writers. especially other poets for many years. Since I have retired and am 

spending time at the cabin with fewer distractions I have began to study

Dante's work more seriously as one of the hobbies that I will undertake to

try and keep my mind active. I have been listening to the DVD series on

Dante from Great Courses but I also really recommend the Open Yale Courses

series they cover a number of topics in science and the arts, and are free on the 

web. Since webcasts are problematic given our internet costs at the cabin I have

been reading the book Reading Dante by Giuseppe Mazzotta a transcript of his

lectures, many of which I have watched and loved. One passage struck me as 

especially interesting as he was discussing Dante's use of hope as a "verb of the 

future" in Dante's the Vita Nuova a work which preceded the Comedy. Since

I have found a bit of introspection comes with the territory as one ages I liked

the way Mazzotta discussed the past especially past errors.

" To say "I hope" is a theological virtue, and hope here too always implies the future.

It says the past is not really over and done with because once you enter into the category

will be seen in terms of a new life of hope, you really believe you can change the meaning

 of the past. The fact that things happen whereby all your past errors can and will be seen

in terms of a new life means that there is the possibility of change instead of destruction."

from Reading Dante, by Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University Press 2014 page 10. 

Conch

You build a house for your soul,

and wander proudly 

in starlight

with the house on your back,

like a snail.

When danger in near,

you crawl inside

and are safe

behind your hard

shell.

And when you are no more,

the house will

live on,

a testament

to your soul's beauty.

And the sea of your loneliness

will sing deep

inside.

Olav H. Hauge

While I normally avoid commenting on the news my wife and I 

have enjoyed many trips to Charleston and were quite sad

to hear of the tragic deaths.

" That this aggressive haste has influenced us detrimentally

from our earliest schooldays is sad but inescapable. Unhappily,

moreover, the increasing speed of modern life has long since

done away with what meager leisure we had then. Our ways of

enjoying ourselves are hardly less irritating and nerve-racking

than the pressure of our work."As much as possible, as fast as

possible" is the motto. And so there is more and more entertainment

and less and less joy."

                         from On Little Joys 1905

                           by Hermann Hesse

"And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,

Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,

Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,

Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,

Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces. "

from Dolor

  by Theodore Roethk

I have not been visiting other blogs or posting lately.

We have been preparing for a trip to the cabin and I

have been learning to edit my photos on a MacBook Air.

Also I have been getting used to my retirement. We 

imbue things, birthdays, graduations, anniversaries

with great meaning mark our calendars and then the 

the sun comes up we make breakfast and things roll

along pretty much as usual. Retirement seems to be 

one of the more significant marks, for thirteen years I 

went to the same building sat in the same office and 

talked to some subset of the same people each of who

shared a common work calendar but also had their own

personal calendars with other days circled for new jobs,

moves, births, deaths and their own retirement all of

us circling in a kind of Brownian motion. Stepping 

away from that dance, I have found I still have my 

own interests, nature, books, my own places, our home

in the city and our cabin, my family and friends. And 

while I will miss some of the people I now have the

chance to try new things and spend more time with the

people, places and activities  I want to spend time with

with.

We have been at the cabin a little more than a week.

Here are a few of the things we have seen

Under a granary at the farm vixen 3 kits

"And help me understand this person that I've gradually become,

Yet long ago imagined - a perfectly ordinary one

Whose mansion is the future, but whose setting is a 

Landscape of a summer afternoon, with a sky heavy in the distance

And a book resting lightly in his hands."

  from A Parking Lot With Trees

     by John Koethe

"Then morning showed

Infinity's proportions, 

The proper height of the sky.

Becoming small

We were grown again."

from Growing up

Dorothy Livesay, Selected Poems [1926-1956] 

Helen began taking one of the dogs on a longer walk once she retied. 

Now that I am also home we can all go out at once taking long daytime

walks thru the neighborhood enjoying the small parks and the lovely 

mid-60's houses. Monday was a day of bugs and blossoms.

  

  

Tuesday was a horse of a different colour. When I let the dogs 

out I quickly joined them with a camera, initially not 

even bothering with a shirt. It was a unexpected treat with

snowflakes on the tongue and heads poking thru the snow.

I did eventually get dressed and leave the yard but it was the 

first glimpses that proved the most enchanting. When I came

into the house I knew I would turn to my slender volumes 

of the works of Canadian poets to look for quotes. although

 when I did I was attracted not to the poems about snow. 

But the poems about youth and magic.

"When the day bends over backwards

to bring forth the light

I must know by whose permission

I inhabit this place

in the holy congregation of animals

 and mortal stones."

from Magic Animals, 1972-1974

by Gwendolyn MacEwen 

"The blue jay scuffling in the bushes follows
Some hidden purpose, and the gush of birds
That spurts across the field, the wheeling swallows,
Have nested in the trees and undergrowth.
Seeking their instinct, or their pose, or both,
One moves with an uncertain violence
Under the dust thrown by a baffled sense
Or the dull thunder of approximate words."

from On the Move 'Man, You Gotta Go.'

by Thom Gunn

In many locations a Blue Jay would not be noteworthy

but here I do not see a lot of them. I suspect the Magpies

may fill a similar niche. But I have been stuffing the feeder

with peanuts just to lure the jays. Once they arrive you can 

certainly tell they are there, the house resounds with their

raucous calls. They are such a beautiful blue.

And a quote from an old favorite.

" Forked sticks upon the air,

Half-dead trees, where two

Blue jays shriek the summer sky

To a deaf world, their blue

The only water here.

The sun is axeman among dry

Slashing: he would clear

Kindling from these rocky hills:

The logos as belated pioneer,

One cry with the fanatic jay. ..,"

                          Blue Jay in Haliburton

                               D.G. Jones

Mezzo Cammin

"Half of my life is gone, and I have let
   The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
   The aspiration of my youth, to build
   Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
   Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
   But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
   Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
   Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
   A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
   And hear above me on the autumnal blast
   The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

So I am officially retired,  from working, not blogging.

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

"This is the life I wanted, and could never see.

For almost twenty years I thought that it was enough:

That real happiness was either unreal, or lost, or endless,

And that remembrance was as close to it as I could ever come.

And I believed that deep in the past, buried in my heart

Beyond the depth of sight, there was a kingdom of peace.

And so I never imagined that when peace would finally come

It would be on a summer evening, a few blocks away from home

In a small suburban park, with some children playing aimlessly

In an endless light, and a lake shining in the distance."

from In the Park

by John Koethe

“And beyond the Wild Wood again. he asked:

Where its all dim and blue, and one sees what may

be hills or perhaps they mayn t, and something like

the smoke of towns, or is it only cloud-drift.

Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,"

said the Rat."And that's something that doesn't matter,

either to you or to me. I've never been there,

and I'm never going' nor you either, if you've got any

sense at all.”

from The Wind in the Willows

by Kenneth Grahame