While we have stayed here in late August before this is the first year we have heard geese calling loudly from the far slough. This year we did not see many swallows around the cabin, some of their nests occupied by phoebes instead. There were also very few snakes in the hay field and none by the cabin. Each year is different, but some creatures are so entrenched within oure sense of place that their absence is like notes missing from a favourite tune. A discord season.

"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."

from Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

“Much is missed if we have eyes only for the bright colors. 

Nature should be viewed without distinction… She makes no choice 

herself; everything that happens has equal significance. 

Nothing can be dispensed with. This is a common mistake 

that many people make: They think that half of nature 

can be destroyed — the uncomfortable half 

— while still retaining the acceptable and the pleasing side.”

 – Eliot Porter

We left the cabin last week, fall was just entering the stage

but plans for travel meant, that this year at least, we could

not stay for the change. Now that we have a wood stove,

we may give it a try next year. When I think of the seasons

I always, eventually think of Edwin Way Teale.

"We would see a thousand moods and facets of the season, 

We would see new birds, new lands, all in the surroundings

of fall."

from Autumn Across America

"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.

"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 

"Am I going on too much? I value these because they happened,
and the sum of them is my lifetime."


From Roger Ebert's Salon.com article My Backup Mom
(discussing his memories of his family and friends)



I have been feeling the passage of time lately something I think
is quite common as one grows older. Certainly I find a lot
of writers discussing the past, memory, history, the passage
of personal time, the passage of institutions, customs. A poet 

I have been reading lately John Koethe excels at memory and 

passage of time in the city landscape.

 

"This is the life I wanted, and could never see.
For almost twenty years I thought that it was enough:
That real happiness was either unreal, or lost, or endless,
And that remembrance was as close to it as I could ever come.
And I believed that deep in the past, buried in my heart
Beyond the depth of sight, there was a kingdom of peace.
And so I never imagined that when peace would finally come
It would be on a summer evening, a few blocks away from home
In a small suburban park, with some children playing aimlessly
In an endless light, and a lake shining in the distance.

Eventually, sometime around the middle of your life,
There’s a moment when the first imagination begins to wane.
The future that had always seemed so limitless dissolves,
And the dreams that used to seem so real float up and fade.
The years accumulate; but they start to take on a mild,
Human tone beyond imagination, like the sound the heart makes
Pouring into the past its hymns of adoration and regret.
And then gradually the moments quicken into life,
Vibrant with possibility, sovereign, dense, serene;
And then the park is empty and the years are still."


from The Park
John Koethe

 

So staying with the theme of time a homage to the seasons.

 

 

 

I have loved science fiction since encountering it in the school
and public libraries I frequented as a child in Windsor. Lately
I have been adding SF anthologies from the 1940’s and
1950’s to my collection. I love the strange stores that appeared
in an pulp magazine were republished in a old anthology and
then disappeared forever. For example a running bathtub that
brings down the skyscrapers of New York? Tonight I opened
the mails and there was Science Fiction Adventure in Dimension
(time) but the first story I picked out was by a favorite author
Ray Bradbury and I encountered this wonderful passage set on Mars

 

 

 

Max registers his approval.

“There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. He smiled and
turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did
time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you
wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water
running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping
down upon hollow box lids, and rain. And, going further,
what did Time look like? Time look like snow dropping
silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an
ancient theater, 100 billion faces falling like those New Year
balloons, down and down into nothing. That was how Time
smelled and looked and sounded. And tonight-Tomas shoved
a hand into the wind outside the truck-tonight you could almost
taste time.
He drove the truck between hills of time"




                                                         Night Meeting
                                                                            Ray Bradbury

"The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings,

facing outwards like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in

intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle

awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape:

or breaking into seeminly meaningless gyrations, while

partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern

to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps,

to control the steps of the dance.” 

from A Question Of Upbringing: 

A Dance to the Music of Time

Anthony Powell

Autumn is here, meaning the garden is almost done

but there is still time for a few last looks.

A seasonal dance.

A  few moments to bask in the warm winds

and golden light.

"the distant pounding of centaurs' hoofs dying away,

as the last note of their conch trumpeted out over hyperborean seas.

Even the formal measure of the Seasons seemed suspended in the

wintery silence. "

from Hearing Secret Harmonies:

A Dance to the Music of Time

Anthony Powell

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”

                                                                                       Walden

                                                                                             Henry David Thoreau                                               

Today the Grackles reappeared I would say returned but some I am sure have been with us all summer. Typically we see small flocks in the spring and again in the fall, gleaming black metallic knights with their bronze and violet feathers, the sunlight reflected a different spectrum with every turn and pirouette. This year a family also appeared in midsummer with their squalling chicks reflecting every phase of the transition from callow youth to adult.  I have seen the large winter flocks in Charleston but here they are more of a beautiful novelty and when I think of the house in Calgary they will have a strong seasonal association for me. I find that living in the city I often experience the seasons more through memory and art than through my day to day reality so the Grackle today are welcome guests.

The advent of fall here has started me thinking about the seasons. One trend that has saddened me lately is the calls for year round schools. As I am neither, parent or educator I see this not from a practical stance but through the rather romantic lens of childhood. As adults we live increasingly in a 24 7 world. Technology allows those of us who live in the cities of the developed world to even out the seasonal effects of climates on products, housing even the cycle of day and night. A winter vacation can be taken in the tropics a shift worker can start at midnight and go home to sleep with the dawn.  It is a reality we live in but one I would like to spare children, so much of the school I remember revolved around the seasons, our art projects of cutting out pumpkins and Christmas trees, the gathering and preserving of fallen leaves for science projects, even the stories in our readers and the pageants we performed often had a seasonal theme.

It is hard to imagine that these seasonal pursuits with have the same resonance  for children that live in the same world as their parents, where time off is the same two weeks squeezed in here and there for practically and convenience. The world we used to inhabit was a thing of grand sweeping gestures not a world anchored to the cheese paring of time.

“February and there are Valentines for everyone for once.

Easter eggs, paper tulips, it is spring and change is in the air.

And in the summer you ran thru an endless twilight

until the street lights called you home.”

                                        from Days of Construction Paper and Macaroni

                                                                                              Guy

“Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

     In the moon that is always rising,

          Nor that riding to sleep

     I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

          Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea. “

                                                                               Fern Hill

                                                                                 Dylan Thomas