" I would clothe you in feathers

You are too bare in your long bones when the wind

sighs in the snow

You are the movement of birds"

from Words from the Aviary

(for Monique)

by D.G. Jones

It is snowing today. but I am cheating these photos were taken during a snow fall in early Oct. I suspect my favourite winter birds are the Dark-Eyed Juncos, who appear with the snow and disappear when it does. This year we had lots. They really seemed to be interested in the small seeds that fell from the volunteer weeds in  the patio, which we left in place. The Juncos interest me  because of their subtle colours and also the variation between birds. According to the Canadian Wildlife Federation our weeds, twiggy yard and lack of a fall cleanup was just what Junco's like. We also had a lot of fall warblers so this is a strategy we plan to stick to. 

http://cwf-fcf.org/en/resources/encyclopedias/fauna/birds/dark-eyed-junco.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIx6n5mtWI5gIVRCCtBh16bQHXEAAYASAAEgJxPPD_BwE

"Life is a long walk forward through the crowded cars 

of a passenger train, the bright world racing past beyond 

the windows, people on either side of the aisle, strangers 

whose stories we never learn, dear friends whose names 

we long remember and passing acquaintances whose
names and faces we take in like a breath and soon

breathe away."

from Local Wonders

Ted Kooser

When I decided to use the Kooser quote above I had intended

to end with another quote from one of his poems. However while

flipping through the The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English

Verse Chosen by Philip Larkin I found The Ice by Gibson and loved 

the  poem so much I decided to use it instead. Kooser's strength is 

always metaphor and the image of life as a walk through the cars of a 

moving train really spoke to me. I could not resist complimenting it

with Gibson's poems dealing with the stages of life where the elderly

women has attained the wisdom to ignore the jeers of others and 

experience the pure joy of childhood. I love the ability of literature to

allow us to share the experience of others or view the world from a 

different perspective. We all use a variety of sources and mechanisms

to guide our lives and make sense of the world whether it is personal 

experience,  family, community, religion, political ideology, science or 

art etc. I really enjoy using science, nature, literature and paintings 

to inform my world view and colour my experience. And of course

pets and science fiction.

In winter we tend to hibernate here we are going for it.

Saturday I had hoped to go to an Ivan Eyre show but the 

weather took a real turn for the worse so I took some photos

of the usual suspects enjoying the heated bird bath. Today

we started with -20 celsius and have warmed up to -11 so

I am watching the CFL playoffs and thinking about vacuuming. 

"HER day out from the workhouse-ward, she stands,

A grey-haired woman, decent and precise,

With prim black bonnet and neat paisley shawl,

Among the other children by the stall;

And with grave relish eats a penny ice.

To wizened toothless gums, with quaking hands

She holds it, shuddering with deliscious cold;

Nor heeds the jeering laughter of young men --

The happiest, in her innocense, of all:

For, while their insolent youth must soon grow old,

She, who's been old, is now a child again."

The Ice

Wilfred Gibson

You are here, alive in this place,

touching with sight

things that are smoke tomorrow

from Alive in the World

John Haines

I could not capture the motion but all day the vent on 

the neighbors garage has spun round beneath its little

cap of snow.

Two days of snow and the feeders and heated  bird bath

have been the centre of attention in a cold and windy world.

And for me this is always a welcome site seeing that they

are here and things are, in this moment as they should be.

So the song is becoming as the world

becomes, and it can never leave us;

 because we are the notice in its passages,

from Song of the Ocean of the World Becoming

Pattiann Rogers

"Throughout this long flow of the seasons,

life in an infinite variety of forms. life dormant in bur
and bud, in burrow and pupa-case, life biding its time,

would respond to the increasing warmth."

Wandering Through Winter

Edwin Way Teale

But today our winter chapter begins.

"Now as I stand 

Before the the window and attend

The sailing, flurrying flakes, the whitening land

I seek again in vain some clue or key

To liberate the guarded mystery.

This much, no more I know:

That science,  fixed to finite laws

Is helpless to unveil 

The supervening cause

And so, once more, I fail.

Now in my eighth decade, no wiser now 

Than the spellbound child
who first beheld beguiled, 
Long seventy years ago
Enchanted snow."

                                               Enchanted Snow 
                                          Melville Cane