Fall Reflections

"This land like a mirror turns you inward

And you become a forest in a furtive lake;

The dark pines of your mind reach downward,

You dream in the green of your time,

Your memory is a row of sinking pines."

from Dark Pines Under Water

by Gwendolyn MacEwen

"Vast and majestic, mountains embrace your shadow;

broad and deep, rivers harbour your voice."

                T'ao Ch'ien

"I look south to Deer-Gate Mountain. haze

lavish, as if some fragrance remained.

but his old mountain home is lost there:

mist thick and forests all silvered azure."

from Hsiang Travels: Thinking of Meng Hao-jan

by Po Chu-i

"Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate from the bridge it covers."

from Monet Refuses the Operation

by Lisel Mueller

   We arrived at the cabin a couple of days ago. 
These photos were taken by the trail camera attached
to the post by the porch steps. The bear appears for
several days after we left then nothing.

“ ...If there is to be a poet in these modern times,

he must go out for himself and must gain much

wisdom. He must look deeply into the world,

and far into time, even though he sees both the

world and time from some little microcosm like

Sheep Rock Spring.”

                                                from Sheep Rock

                                                        by  George R. Stewart,

"Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; 

Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty 

Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; 

All pleasures and all pains, remembering 

The bough of summer and the winter branch. 

These are the measures destined for her soul. "

    from  Sunday Morning 

                   Wallace Stevens

"Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness

Of the Midwest?Where is Minneapolis? I can see nothing

But the great terrible oak tree darkening with winter.

Did you find the city of isolated men beyond mountains?

Or have you been holding the end of a frayed rope

For a thousand years? "

from As I Step Over A Puddle At The End Of Winter
I think Of An Ancient Chinese Governor

                   James Wright 

"Doors were left open in heaven again:
drafts wheeze, clouds wrap their ripped pages
around roofs and trees. Like wet flags, shutters
flap and fold. Even light is blown out of town,
its last angles caught in sopped
newspaper wings and billowing plastic -
all this in one American street."
 

                                     The Worlds in this World                                               

                                                  Laure-Anne Bosselaar

                                                 

I mentioned in my last post that I was pondering

which was the chicken and which the egg, whether

I look at nature differently because I am reading

my favorite poets or whether I read them because

they help me place what I have seen it some

kind of context. I know they are an important

refuge for me.

"Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."

                  Wild Geese

                                       Mary Oliver

Since my return from Washington I have been

looking at photos of some of the great paintings

we saw, I was wondering if I should post some

details of the beautiful landscapes we saw at the

National Museum of American Art.

I had just begun to reread a wonderful book, 

Edwward Hirsch's How to Read a Poem and

Fall in love with Poetry, when I opened it and

saw this quote from Emerson's journals. I knew

I wanted to use the paintings and the quote

together. I did not record all the artist and titles

of the painting we saw. The last by Moran was

one of my favorites

Below a detail from

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Thomas Moran

"I dreamed that I floated at will in the great Ether,

and I saw this world floating also not far off, but

diminished to the size of an apple. Then an angel

took it in his hand & brought it to me and said

'This must thou eat.' And I ate the world"

                      Ralph Waldo Emerson

I found this beetle last week in the parking lot

at work. I am always surprised to find aquatic

beetles in areas some distance from water. Twice

I have found Giant Water Bugs, a creature I first

encountered in the pages of Annie Dillard's

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek a couple of blocks from

my office. I assume they mistake the dark asphalt

for water. This was considerably smaller than the

Giant Water Bug Lethocerus americanus.

I have identified it as a Mid-Sized Diving Beetle

Colymbetes sculptilis

If I am mistaken please let me know.

" Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery,

like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face

of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view,

look at the whole landscape, really see it... "

 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

                         Annie Dillard