Waiting

“So," said Moundshroud. "If we fly fast, maybe we can catch Pipkin. Grab his sweet Halloween corn-candy soul. Bring him back, pop him in bed, toast him warm, save his breath. What say, lads? Search and seek for lost Pipkin, and solve Halloween, all in one fell dark blow?"
They thought of All Hallows' Night and the billion ghosts awandering the lonely lanes in cold winds and strange smokes.

They thought of Pipkin, no more than a thimbleful of boy and sheer summer delight, torn out like a tooth and carried off on a black tide of web and horn and black soot.

And, almost as one, they murmured: "Yes.”

from The Halloween Tree
by Ray Bradbury

Smoky Sept trip to the mountains.

 

"An amphitheatre that held
Valleys and cliffs and waterfalls,
Gorges hewn like royal halls,
forests flanked by hills at swelled
To mountains, these again to clouds"

fron Titans

by E.J. Pratt

Calgary -12C/ 10F feels like -20C/-4F waiting for the furnace repair person (it might have finally stopped snowing)

 

"From the window. Yes and you know
In your heart what the chill winds blow."

from Watershed
by Margaret Avison

Very snowy day

  "burning on the snow
drag-footed across the fields
whiskey-faced men go

the blind lead the blind
and coarse oglers invade the
countries of the mind"

from Haiku on Brueghel
by Phyllis Gotlieb 

 While Calgary often gets snow in Sept and October, sometimes quite significant snowfalls, it normally lasts a day or so, then the autumnal weather returns. This year it has been cold and snowy for some days and today promises to be more of the same. 

Alberta, Canada, 2020

 

“This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo,
And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro.” 
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterburty Tales 

from Snow Towards Evening by Melville Crane

"From some invisible blossoming tree

Millions of petals, cool and white.

Drifted and blew,

Lifted and flew,

Fell with the falling night."

 

Fall deer - Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park Oct. 9th

"Instructed by heron,
drink the pure silence.
Be compassed by wind.
If you quiver like aspen

trust your quick nature:
let your ear teach
you which way to listen."


from How to See Deer
by Philip Booth

https://defendabparks.ca/

Drumheller - Books - Reading

"He had long wanted some neutral time, in which he could let go of the fixations of a liner life story story and rediscover the infinite potential of simply being. "

from Shrike
by Quentin S. Crisp

Oct 14, Snow Day

 

    "Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, 

     its white flag waving over everything,

      the landscape vanished,

      not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,   

      and beyond these windows"

      from Snow Day

       by Billy Collins  

She, then, like snow in a dark night,
Fell secretly. And the world waked
With dazzling of the drowsy eye,

from Like Snow

by Robert Graves

Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park Oct 9th

“But when the sun drops closer to the earth, the cold of the earth runs to it from the water and causes all green things to dry up. And because the sun has dropped closer to the earth, the days are short, and it is winter.”

― Hildegard of Bingen, 

I am not sure the quote is scientifically accurate but it is a nice conceit. It is still fall here though. 

https://defendabparks.ca/

Trip to the mountains pika and it's food pile

"Who sees, the ultimate Recipient
of what happens, the One Who is aware
when, in the administrative wing
a clerk returns from noon-day, through
the ointment of mortality
for one strange hour, in all his lustreless life,
has touched his face."

from The Apex Animal
by Margaret Avison

https://defendabparks.ca

The Mountains

"the shadow of
the mist shall yet
with but the time
this granite fret"

from Sky Spindrift
by James Wreford

https://defendabparks.ca

Trip to Drum - Fall colours

Wring all your memories for the future

Out of this hour and this warm wind-

Hands clasped tight, eyes gazing over

The valley of autumn choked with sun,

from The Soldier's Settlement

by John Glassco

Trip to the mountains

 

    "Only to life have the cedars learned to attend."

     from Epithalamion in Time and Place

     by Roy Daniels

https://defendabparks.ca/

Trip to Drum - Dancing Through the Last Days of Sept

 

"Open up the window

I'm breathing in the last of September

I can feel the wind blow

and the late summer sky is like a giant ember

everything is turning into gold"

Last Days of September by Henrik Nagy feat Frida Wallin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zSdBF1ywKs