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

Clouds

One thing I love about being at the farm and especially at our cabin just up the grid is the sky. Clouds and the weather in general just fascinate me. So here are some photos taken at the farm the night before we left to return to Calgary. 

"There is no thunder in her hair,
upon her lips no rain,
yet world and weather through that door
have come alive again,"

from Six Songs from a Play, First Song
by Patrick Anderson

Crow in Calgary

"Go on, wild voice; the world's in need of singing

A sort of dead of winter holds the heart.

The climate's changed." 

from Upon a Bird Singing on Parliament Hill

by James Wreford

One thing the hand of Time shall spare, For the grim Idiot at the gate Is deathless and eternal there.

"cattle and horses browsed around

derricks and pumps.

I braked the car when a mare and colt

wandered onto the road.

They stared at me, and I thought,

here is the past, looking at the present.

Then I remembered that grass will come up

when the wells are stuttering straws

in an empty bottle."

from Meeting on Asphalt

by Bert Alnon

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alta-oilsands-monitoring-1.5673433

The deal says no fieldwork is to be done on the main branch of the Athabasca River. That means the program won't fund monitoring downstream of the oilsands even as the province considers proposals to allow the water from oilsands tailings ponds to be released into the river.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/alberta-nwt-chiefs-losing-faith-environment-monitoring-1.5674446

Subject line is from Archibald Lampman's "The City at the End of Things"

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.

Dorothy, Alberrta

"With the maps lost, the voyages

Cancelled by legislation years ago,

This is become a territory without name."

from NOT THE SWEET CICELY OF GERARDES HERBALL

by Margaret Avison

On a walk thru the neighbourhood

"Caught                              

           pressed into words

                                                made crazy with colour"

       from MOMENTS ARE MONUMENTS

           by Phyllis Webb