The Bull

"Up there far enough you might hear the world, not 

what people say."

from The Prof 

by William Stafford

Last week we saw  a young bear on the point that juts out into the slough to the left of the cabin, the second bear we have seen there this summer. I did not get a good photo. Last night my wife pointed out that there was a moose on the right side of the slough. The ability to see these animals for our porch is one of the glories of this location.

"Cocked in that land tactile as leaves

wild things wait crouched in those valleys

west of your city outside your lives"

from Midwest 

by William Stafford

"The wild keeps telling us something 

we want to pass on to the world:

Even far things are real.

from Whispered into the Ground

No sooner were we back for the coast then we 

visited one of my favourite spots, our friend's place  

on the prairie in Southern Alberta, where I managed 

to see one of my favourite animals. And no post

on the prairies would be complete without the poems
of William Stafford.

"That winter when this thought came-how the river

held still every midnight and flowed

backward a minute-we studied algebra

late in our room fixed up in the barn, 

and I would feel the curved relation, 

the rafters upside down, and the cows in their life

holding the earth round and ready

to meet itself again when morning came."

from Living on the Plains