Last night we had a lovely supper and visit with family

 

“Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.

Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies

like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,

some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,

snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn

back into the little system of his care.

All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,

tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.”

Ted Kooser, Flying At Night: Poems 1965-1985

At the farm Christmas 2023

                                                     

"When the great wind comes

and the robberies of the rain

you stand on the corner shivering.

The people who go by—

you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs

any day in your mind,

“Who are you really, wanderer?”—

and the answer you have to give

no matter how dark and cold

the world around you is:

“Maybe I’m a king.”"

from A Story That Could Be True

by William Stafford

https://poetry.princeton.edu/2010/01/05/a-story-that-could-be-true/

Snow Day

"White are the far-off plains, and white
The fading forests grow;
The wind dies out along the height,
And denser still the snow,
A gathering weight on roof and tree,
Falls down scarce audibly."

from Snow by Archibald Lampman

 

It's been an odd summer

 

It has been an odd summer. Broken up by trips back to Calgary, heat domes, the drought, wasps and some personal matters I will not go into, we did not do many of the things we had planned. We did not make paths around the back slough, hook up the water system and install the grey water tank. We never got the canoe to the slough though whether the water level was high enough anyway is questionable. We did manage a lovely week in Grasslands Park which is another post or two.

It seems when we leave in a few weeks we will have again cancelled our travel plans but that is fine. More time to fuss with dogs and books and craft projects I really mean to start this time.


It is fall now, a couple days of rain mean the water tanks are full for the first time this year. All but one or two of the Franklin's Ground Squirrels have turned in. But we also had our first Thirteen-lined ground squirrel under the feeder. The White Throated Sparrows that have been lurking in the grass all summer are now jostling there with the chipmunks. Chickadees now seem to outnumber everything else but the drought has also meant we have shorebirds skirting the edge of the slough. This morning I started a fire to take the chill off before the family was up, caught the sunlight thru the smoke and startled a heron eying the ducklings. 

"one side so far from the other

it is impossible

to see across

without stepping out

                              onto a slick, tight rope,"

from (Re)conciliation by Cindy Clarke

Within These Lines

If you took an Uber in Washington, D.C., a couple of years ago, there was a chance your driver was one of the greatest living Uyghur poets.

 

Let there be a man who lived through the winter
Let him fill his inner pocket with rain
and find a farmer
sowing his fields with wind seeds
and let him say to the farmer: “Here I am.”

Three Poems by Tahir Hamut Izgil

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/tahir-hamut-three-poems/

Atlantic article.

https://www.theatlantic.com/the-uyghur-chronicles/

On the way home from town

                                                   

(from) Deer Stolen by William Stafford

Deer have stood around our house

at night so still nobody knew,

and waited with ears baling air.

I hunt the still deer everywhere,

"Nothing There: The Late Poetry of John Koethe" by Robert Hahn

 "And that is why artists keep trying—to speak to something beyond the confines of the page, to move the stars to pity."

from "Nothing There: The Late Poetry of John Koethe" by Robert Hahn

https://kenyonreview.org/reviews/the-swimmer-by-john-koethe-738439/

 I am thinking about poetry and that can only be a good thing.

Work on the basement continues. I am also going thru old photos. Calgary Zoo lights.

 

"Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry? "

from The Tyger

by William Blake

Northern Flickers at the front porch over the last two days. (Better than the news)

"I lived in the first century of world wars.

Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen."

from Poem by Muriel Rukeyser

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47657/poem-i-lived-in-the-first-century-of-world-wars

Sunday. Jan 17. 2021

"Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:"

W.H. Auden

Jan. 9th 2021

"The wax has melted

but the dream of flight

persists."

from This Heavy Craft

by P.K. Page

With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

 

Helen and I were walking the dogs thru the neighbourhood looking at the decorations. I had put up some outside lights and the interior was bursting with the tree, Nutcrackers and various Santas. I did say that what I really wanted to add was one of the older style plastic Santa or Snowman figures. Friday we went on the 2nd or 3rd non-grocery/hardware shopping trip since this all started. We went to Inglewood, a neighbourhood known for it's small shops. We had ordered several of the items ahead of time and everyone was very careful. I assume the grinches were at the malls or the various demonstrations. We visited several shops and picked up delicious burgers on the way home, also ordered online. But the highlight of the day was finding this fellow in Murphy's Mid Century a store we have frequented for years. I saw him thru the window before the store opened and we passed by again we were waved in and you can imagine what I looked at first. Coincidence can be a funny thing but it worked for me yesterday and I am delighted with our Christmas display, a little light for a gloomy time.

"Cards in each mailbox, 

angel, manger, star and lamb, 

as the rural carrier, 

driving the snowy roads, 

hears from her bundles 

the plaintive bleating of sheep, 

the shuffle of sandals, 

the clopping of camels. "

from Christmas Mail

by Ted Kooser

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55886/christmas-mail

Venetian Lagoon 2016

 "Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;"

from September 1, 1939
W.H. Auden

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/31/wh-auden-september-1-1939-poem

Atomic Sleep

 

“a series of luminous tracks that betray invisible electrons startled from atomic sleep,”

D. G. Jones

https://thewalrus.ca/startled-from-atomic-sleep/

First I selected the Pound from a Free Library while on a walk with the dogs. Then as we passed again I went beck for the Homer.

"For he has only just got back from abroad, and from a region so remote that one might well give up all hope of return once the winds had blown one astray into the wise expanse of sea, which is so vast and perilous that even the birds cannot make their passage in the year."

from Telemachus with Nestor

I often pick  up different editions of titles I already own,  especially if they are older editions by well known publishers. I enjoy reading different introductions and or notes for the same works. I also enjoy the sense of engagement with the past. The name in the top right corner indicates they came from the same person. And that person seems to have keep them for some time. Sadly there are no annotations. 

"All night, and as the wind lieth among
The cypress trees, he lay,"

from Speech for Psyche in the Golden Book of Apuleius

We looked for Pound's grave when we visited Cemetery Island in Venice. But it was a crowded graveyard and we settled for the grave of Igor Stravinsky.

"I had not thought death had undone so many." T.S. Eliot

Photos, Canadian Poets and the image of the farm

Ten miles from anywhere eighty years and more,
Where the frozen roadstones grind iron shoes and tires
     And the timberwood’s last stand
Lives only in brushwood and long memories,―see,
The new-peeled posts are marching, the taut wires
     Sing to the naked land,

Sing to the valley of slash and beaver-meadow,
The stone-pocked fields and bog-born stunted alders
     And the black hills rising sheer
As mountains of iron and sand round the Genie’s castle
(The age-old view of eyes that each November
     Look back on a wasted year)

from Gentleman's Farm 

by John Glassco

Today two Canadian poetry books came by mail, roses from the garden, Mexican food and cake later

Roses picked from the garden this afternoon, the yellow is a Bill Reid

the two peach are Olds College Roses and the pink is an explorer rose

I think a John Davis.

Two poetry books that came in the mail today. 

The Pratt was a gift in 1927.

This is the first page of "Farewell to Winnipeg" from 

Deeper into the Forest  by Roy Daniels, 1948.

Road Trip to Spiritwood Last Week (Lunch with Pam)

"Do not think for one minute it is the Poem that matters.

Is is not the Poem that matters.

You can shove the Poem.

What matters is what is out there in the large dark

and in the long light,

Breathing."

from Let Me Make This Perfectly Clear

by Gwendolyn MacEwen

Finding Beauty

Finding Beauty

" Our kinship with Earth must be maintained; otherwise, we will find ourselves 
trapped in the center of our own paved-over souls with no way out."

                                                       Terry Tempest Williams
                                                               Finding Beauty in a Broken World

I would never disagree.
I understand the world needs another weedy lot covered with satellite dishes,
signs extolling all you can eat lobster and 24-hour hamburgers. I know our cities
are sheltering atolls in the wilderness busily excreting their coral rings of big box 
stores, car lots, and airport hotels to welcome the weary traveller. And I know this 
is both proper and inevitable, who am I to stand in the way of the organic growth 
of the inorganic.

But when you have the asphalt ready for the next mini-mall. let me know so I can 
descend into the excavation past the condoms, cable lines and storm sewer 
pipes. There I will lie down among the grooves left over when the last glacier 
peeled clean the world. And let me take with me the unneeded, the unwanted, 
the dispossessed fox, the back porch skunk, fast food gulls and the crow with 
the broken beak. Cover us with the hot mess and let the world wake us
when you're done.

Guy

     “I farm a little plot of things to say, with not much frontage on the busy road.”

     —Ted Kooser journal entry, December 7, 1972