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

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

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

Road Trip - We found a lovely spot for lunch with friends

 

“A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”

― John Burroughs

Road trip to the mountains - rock

 

 "The rocks are not so close akin to us as the soil; they are one more remove from us; but they lie back of all, and are the final source of all. Time, geologic time, looks out at us from the rocks as from no other objects in the landscape."

John Burroughs

Reader Rock Garden

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

from Sky Spindrift
by James Wreford

We were very daring and went to the Reader Rock garden to see the flowers and have lunch with a friend. It was nice to experience some semblance of normality.

https://www.calgary.ca/csps/parks/locations/se-parks/reader-rock-garden.html

Jay in the Garden (Hi Nessa thanks for stopping by)

""Oh look!" 

There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple, 

Fearless and gay as our love, 

A bluejay cocked his crest! 

Oh who can tell the range of joy 

Or set the bounds of beauty? "

from A Winter Blue Jay

by Sara Teasdale

Upon receiving a lovely gift (new critter) : Edward Lear seems appropriate

"They sailed to the Western sea, they did,

To a land all covered with trees,

And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,

And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart,

And a hive of silvery Bees.

And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,

And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,

And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,

And no end of Stilton Cheese.

Far and few, far and few,

Are the lands where the Jumblies live;

Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,

And they went to sea in a Sieve."

from The Jumblies

"Then Mr. Daddy Long-legs

And Mr. Floppy Fly

Rushed downward to the foamy sea

With one sponge-taneous cry;

And there they found a little boat,

Whose sails were pink and gray;

And off they sailed among the waves,

Far, and far away.

They sailed across the silent main,

And reached the great Gromboolian plain;

And there they play for evermore

At battlecock and shuttledoor."

from The Daddy Long-legs and The Fly

"Blue heaven and brown earth compel me.      I wander as a child at play. What was it, little sparrow, tell me,      That made me grieve so yesterday? "

from A May Song

by Archibald Lampman

	20

The Fly-away horse

"Oh, a wonderful horse is the Fly-Away Horse 

Perhaps you have seen him before;

Perhaps, while you slept, his shadow has swept

Through the moonlight that floats on the floor. 

For it's only at night, when the stars twinkle bright, 

That the Fly-Away Horse, with a neigh 

And a pull at his rein and a toss of his mane, 

Is up on his heels and away!" 

from The Fly-away horse

by Eugene Field

Handhills

"Cocked in that land tactile as leaves

wild things wait crouched in those valleys

west of your city outside your lives

in the ultimate wind, the whole land's wave.

Come west and see; touch these leaves."

from Midwest

by William Stafford

Posts

"My self will be the plain,

wise as winter is gray,

pure as cold posts go

pacing toward what I know."

from The Farm on the Great Plains

by William Stafford

Horse in the Country

"On the high prairie

are only horse and rider

wind in dry grass

clopping in silence under the toy mountains"

from The Cariboo Horses

by Al Purdy

Laraine's horses

More snow last night but let's fire up the Tardis for a trip back in time. From November, Laraine's horses. And one of my favourite poems by one of my favourite poets.

"To-night the very horses springing by

Toss gold from whitened nostrils. In a dream 

The streets that narrow to the westward gleam 

Like rows of golden palaces; and high 

From all the crowded chimneys tower and die 

A thousand aureoles. Down in the west 

The brimming plains beneath the sunset rest, 

One burning sea of gold."

from Winter Evening

by Archibald Lampoon

Caution Horses

"But I've got a horse out in the country

I get to see him every second Sunday

He comes when I call him,

Yeah, he knows his name

One day I'll saddle up

And the two of us will ride away"

from A Horse in the Country

from the song by The Cowboy Junkies

Time to bring this blog back to what it was meant to be, a celebration of nature and poetry. A reaffirmation of life and a buffer between a world that is to much with us.

One of our friend Laraine's horses.

These books came today and I am chuffed, I see the complete poems as a record not just of his best poetry as his collected poems are, but as a record of the fullness of his career and his life. A.R. Ammons was a poet of so many things, the weather, the seasons, time, motion, shapes, forms, the changing natural world and the ultimate inconsequential reality of the individual in a vast universe. 

"We praise the mind for

how high it goes

without losing hold

and how wide

it goes without

blurring

and for how sharply it can 

relish a particular

without losing the 

dispositions in this

fine war-zone

between the great energies,

this narrowing that 

allows life's widest play, "

from For Robert Penn Warren

by A.R.Ammons

In the fall we went to the Island to spent time with some good friends.

We love the coast, but settled for a different ocean. I have been remiss 

in not posting some shots of this magical intersection of rock and sea

earlier. 

"He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; 

he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois 

hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; 

so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another 

world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. 

With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is 

rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, 

out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while 

under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales."

from Moby Dick

by Melville

Someone had a bad winter, 

someone else had a good walk.

"the walk liberating, I was released from forms,   

from the perpendiculars,

      straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds

of thought

into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends   

               of sight:"

from Corsons Inlet

By A.R. Ammons

“how futile is man's poor, weak imagination 

by comparison with Nature's incredible genius.” 

from At The Earth's Core

by  Edgar Rice Burroughs