"We see them

and never see behind them

how flat they are

static

immobile     immovable

cold    calculating

inhuman

 

O the flat platitudes

of the camera!"

 

from Postcard Mountains

Dorothy Livesay

 

Still ( and for a lot of entries, at the Sylvia).

 

I have not decided whether you become

accustomed to this landscape I assume people

can. But for me, whether it is the transition

between land and sea, the different plants,

the fact that in the mornings after high water

the park crew, seen only by the crows, the gulls

and the early morning wanderers, come down with

a big yellow machine to collect the great cedar logs

that have washed up on the shore but I have not

tired of it after several visits. Most of the birds

are not exotic new species instead those I see

are old friends that I greet anew in a strange

landscape that has been reshaped each night thru

the intersection of waves and wind. I find there is

always something new, ducks in the bay, birds on the

rocks and the entire enchanted forest beckoning me,

to explore, to see

 

let's look.

 

 

Down to the seawall.

 

 

Song Sparrow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Those left on land

watch

for a blue breath blown

from the sky's sighing

sea ripple in still light

sail furling out and flying."

 

                            from Parting

                                 Dorothy Livesay

 

Barrow's Goldeneye

 

Large dead trees in the park are sometimes topped

but left standing for woodpeckers. They can become

gardens.

 

 

Or stages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

" His irritable hoarse

coughing cry

contradicts the slow    sure

heavy flight

weighted with wisdom

plumbed calm"

 

from Unmusical Bird

               (blue heron)

 

Dorothy Livesay

 "You are so far away
On this cold and empty night
As I lie in a hotel room
Lookin' at a street light
Outside my window
I listen to the rain
And the sounds of the passin' cars
And the waves on English Bay"

 

   from English Bay

  Blue Rodeo

 

 

"The Sylvia Hotel is a designated heritage building,

ideally located on English Bay, beside Stanley Park

and just 5 minutes from downtown Vancouver.

Built in 1912, the Sylvia Hotel is a city landmark

and one of Vancouver's greatest treasures."

 

From the Sylvia Hotel Website

 

Helen and I have been starting to feel the grey

days of winter so in mid March we were off to

one of our favorite spots,  the Sylvia Hotel on

English Bay in Vancouver. On one side you have

Denman Street with lots of restaurants, in front

the beach and the Seawall, and a block or so away

on the other side Stanley Park. A  1000 acre park

with thousands of fir, cedar, and hemlock trees. In

Mid March we are still too early for the beautiful

displays of rhododendrons and azaleas but despite

the rain, off and on for two of our four days and the

occasional cold winds, it is green and there is no

snow. Our room a corner suite on the seventh floor

has a view of the lights of Denman Street from the

bedroom and views of the bay from the living room.

 

After a walk along the Seawall we had a wonderful

meal at the Legendary Noodle House and picked up

some flowers for the room.

 

 

 

Photo taken from our suite

someone braves the rain to explore

the beach.

 

 

Large groups of gulls and crows frequent the

seawall. Cormorants, herons and rafts of ducks

can normally be seen along the bay.

 

 

 

The Seawall is a favorite place to walk dogs.

 

 

 

A solitary Heron watching the waiting ships

 

 

The following photos were taken from our suite.

 

 

The lights of Denman St from our suite.

"About me the night   moonless   wimples the mountains
wraps ocean   land   air  and mounting
sucks at the stars   The city   throbbing below
webs the sable peninsula   The golden
strands overleap the seajet   by bridge and buoy
vault the shears of the inlet   climb the woods
toward me   falter  and halt   Across to the firefly
haze of a ship on the gulps erased horizon
roll the lambent spokes of a lighthouse"

 

      from Vancouver Lights

  Earle Birney

"We wrote it on our papers
in round big shapes,
Jan., 1928.

The snow outside
glittered like mica-shavings
in the Alberta sunshine."

from A Seed of History

Margaret Avison

 

 

"The country of innocence is

a mistake of nature. The white

Geometry of winter leaves no margin

For error, no relic in the snow."

 

from The Geometry of Winter

 R.A.D. Ford

 

 

"NOT to forget the sullen, grey-cloaked sky

With red along its western hem

Not to forget brown leaves blown down a slope

and all my thoughts pursuing them!"

 

                     from Song to Myself

                          Dorothy Livesay

 

 

"Our best days are now a winter sky

White with coruscations of the clouds,

A mirror of the logos, flared

And cracked across our lives."

   

from Soliloquy to Absent Friends

D.G. Jones

" O when shall we be free of the winter palace? Armorial in air my breath was plantagenet and my heels were spurred."                                               from Winter in Montreal                                                    Patrick Anderson Last Sunday we had a quick prairie storm the weather has been nice since.                            I had not noticed this before the wind has driven the snow into the feeder filling the space above the food.             “Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.”    from Zen in the Art of Writing Ray Bradbury   And once the snow is over we will all go for a walk so Whateley can roll in the new snow.   "Let not another green thing grow the rivers row or the West Wind blow; for the polar front has carried down the latitude of snow."      from Early Williows James Wreford

"Am I going on too much? I value these because they happened,
and the sum of them is my lifetime."


From Roger Ebert's Salon.com article My Backup Mom
(discussing his memories of his family and friends)



I have been feeling the passage of time lately something I think
is quite common as one grows older. Certainly I find a lot
of writers discussing the past, memory, history, the passage
of personal time, the passage of institutions, customs. A poet 

I have been reading lately John Koethe excels at memory and 

passage of time in the city landscape.

 

"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.

Eventually, sometime around the middle of your life,
There’s a moment when the first imagination begins to wane.
The future that had always seemed so limitless dissolves,
And the dreams that used to seem so real float up and fade.
The years accumulate; but they start to take on a mild,
Human tone beyond imagination, like the sound the heart makes
Pouring into the past its hymns of adoration and regret.
And then gradually the moments quicken into life,
Vibrant with possibility, sovereign, dense, serene;
And then the park is empty and the years are still."


from The Park
John Koethe

 

So staying with the theme of time a homage to the seasons.

 

 

 

I have loved science fiction since encountering it in the school
and public libraries I frequented as a child in Windsor. Lately
I have been adding SF anthologies from the 1940’s and
1950’s to my collection. I love the strange stores that appeared
in an pulp magazine were republished in a old anthology and
then disappeared forever. For example a running bathtub that
brings down the skyscrapers of New York? Tonight I opened
the mails and there was Science Fiction Adventure in Dimension
(time) but the first story I picked out was by a favorite author
Ray Bradbury and I encountered this wonderful passage set on Mars

 

 

 

Max registers his approval.

“There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. He smiled and
turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did
time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you
wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water
running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping
down upon hollow box lids, and rain. And, going further,
what did Time look like? Time look like snow dropping
silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an
ancient theater, 100 billion faces falling like those New Year
balloons, down and down into nothing. That was how Time
smelled and looked and sounded. And tonight-Tomas shoved
a hand into the wind outside the truck-tonight you could almost
taste time.
He drove the truck between hills of time"




                                                         Night Meeting
                                                                            Ray Bradbury