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.

I changed my coat for this?

Yesterday we dropped by CDN Tire and I picked up four 

roses. It was cold and the snow was not far behind. But

the trees are budding and this morning we are seem to be 

becalmed between the seasons.

"We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,"

from Sunday Morning

By Wallace Stevens

"What's past is prologue"

                                   The Tempest

"O'er all the sand-waste, with a gradual fall,

Were raining down dilated flakes of fire,

As of the snow on Alp without a wind. 

As Alexander, in those torrid parts 

of India, beheld upon his host 

Flames fall unbroken till they reached the ground,"

Dante Inferno XIV, Longfellow trans. 

And the winter weather, skiffs of snow regularly 

since our return from Venice 

continues apace.

  

   "I love the way the light falls over the suburbs
Late on these summer evenings, as the buried minds
Stir in their graves, the hearts swell in the warm earth
And the soul settles from the air into its human home.
This is where the prodigal began, and now his day is ending
In a great dream of contentment, where all night long
The children sleep within tomorrow’s peaceful arms
And the past is still,"

from  In The Park

by John Koethe

Walking the dogs thru the neighborhood or cutting

roses in the garden in the summer reminds me of

childhood summers with their green lawns, gentle

breezes and almost endless twilight. 

The passages in these poems spoke to those feelings and if

Koethe later changes the mood of his poem with the

habitual, pessimistic, qualifications I find frustrating in

his work, for me the (lovely) damage was already done

and I chose to focus on the evening light, the stillness and

the children asleep in tomorrow's peaceful arms.

the Garden

the Pond

As someone nearing 60 who still has my childhood

copy of Black Beauty. how could I not include this stanza

from Stafford's poem.

"Animals that knew the way to Heaven

wagged at the back doors of every house

when I was young, and horses told fences

the story of Black Beauty, and smelled of the good manger."

from When I Was Young

by William Stafford

 

Sunday in the Garden 

“All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, 
vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; 
and still, as he lived, he wondered.” 

from The Wind and the Willows
Kenneth Grahame

 

" To gaze at a river made of time and water 
and remember that Time is another river. 
To know we stray like a river 
and our faces vanish like water. "

from The Art of Poetry

Jorge Luis Borges

 

"There were no prayers said. But stillness
Of the heart's passions -- that was praise
Enough; and the mind's cession
Of its kingdom. I walked on,
Simple and poor, while the air crumbled
And broke on me generously as bread."

 

             from The Moor

                  R.S. Thomas

 

Snow last night, mostly gone now

in the city and 0 degrees I am glad

I brought in a few of the late roses.

 

 

 

A last gift, Morden Fireglow Roses

 

"it's necessary to be quiet in the hands of the marvelous"

 

                   from Essay on Poetics 

                                A.R. Ammons

I had planned to stick to posts about the

trip to the cabin for now. However there has been a

lot going on and I could not resist an entry.

 roses are as seen from our bedroom window

the day we got back. When we left only a few

hardy roses like Teresa Brunet had bloomed.

"Delight in the small

those that inhabit

only a corner of the mind,

the ones shaped by wind

and a season: a slip of

grass, the nameless flower

that offers its scent

to a small wind."

Delight in the Small, The Silent

From Lorne Crozier's The Garden 

Going on Without Us

The juvenile robins as seen from the living room

windows were also interesting. I have been

trying to figure out if the difference in marking

is age or sex based.

"In the square

there is a wall where the old men sit and watch 

the young go by; he is seated in a row with them.

Desires are already memories."  

                   Invisible Cities

                             Italo Calvino

All week a flock of young House Sparrows emptied the

feeders. The today a pair of Grackles with four or more

young showed up and things got loud.

Only one chick appeared to be begging and the

adult ignored the others and carried the cleaned 

seeds to the called chick. One can only imagine 

what it was like to feed all of them

In these shots we can see that the chick's feather colours

vary among the brood I assume that is because they hatch

at different times.

"Whosoever he is that shall hope to cure this malady 

in himself or any other, must first rectify these 

passions and perturbations of the mind:

 the chiefest cure consists in them. A quiet mind 

is that pleasure."

                          Anatomy of Melancholy

                           Robert Burton

A Walk in the Research Park

"This Time

Which carries us away

Far from hours

And from things

Towards places

Without matter

Toward the simple

Earth"

To Each of the Dead

         Andree Chedid

"Momentarily alone, within an ordinary setting-

Disenchanted and alone, but also strangely free,

And suddenly relieved to find a vast inhuman

World, completely independent of our lives

And yet behind them all, still there."

                   Songs My Mother Taught Me

                      John Koethe

A Harvestman on a Schneezwerg rose.

It looks to be missing a leg.

to paraphrase the Bugs of Alberta by John Acorn & Ian Sheldon

  

"There is a legend that if your cow goes missing you

pull the leg off a Harvestman and throw it on the

ground, it will point in the direction the cow went."

They also note there are eight species of

Harvestman in Alberta.

"Delight in the small,

those that inhabit

only a corner of the mind,

the ones shaped by wind

and a season: a slip of

grass, the nameless flower

that offers its scent

to a small wind."

                           Delight in the small, the silent

                             Lorna Crozier

Another visit to the rose garden.  We were working on the

garden pond today, I will post pictures soon but today

I wanted to post the Winnipeg Park rose, 4 ft tall and

covered with blooms I cannot get the colour right but it

is spectacular.

This is also a chance to post a quote from a favorite

poet. The first poetry book I every got from the library

sale table was Gwendolyn MacEwen's Magic Animals

I have gotten others but none this good.

"In our gardens are electric roses
which spark, push light, push fuchsia
in flailing grass

and spines of long magnetic seas cloy,
rake their depths for dust; all holds;
the spines hold the elemental jelly
of the sea’s flesh there.

I walk warily through
my electric garden"

                                          Universe And: The Electric Garden

                                               Gwendolyn MacEwan

      

Arriving home after two weeks spent working on the cabin

we found the garden had gone on without us. I have as you may

guess a thing for roses. I was raised in Windsor ON sometimes

called the City of Roses and my father raised them. I now

have between 25-30 depending on the winter and various sales.

I have a few delicate roses David Austins, Gallicas

( they rarely bloom) and a couple Hybrid teas. Mostly

now I raise Parkland and Explorer roses that are hardy

to our area.

Morden Blush

Morden Blush (detail)

To the right William Baffin and Morden Snowbeauty

William Baffin and Morden Snowbeauty (detail)

"Attar of Nishapur gazed on a rose,

addressing it in words which had no sound,

as one who thinks rather than one who prays:

‘Your fragile globe is in my hand; and time

is bending both of us, both unaware,

this afternoon, in a forgotten garden.

Your brittle shape is humid in the air.

The steady, tidal fullness of your fragrance

rises up to my old, declining face.

But I know you far longer than that child

who glimpsed you in the layers of a dream

or here, in this garden, once upon a morning."

                            The Unending Rose

                          To Susan Bombal

                                                          Jorge Luis Borges