Wednesday, May 13, 2015

"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 

Monday, May 4, 2015


"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