nature needs for this small part
of the world
to move quickly past spring
into summer
in some places
the air
was soft
with the perfumed songs of trees
dreaming their way
through an afternoon
many of those blooms
have now withered
and faded
frederick carl frieseke on the river
each piece of flying blossom leaves spring the less,
i grieve as myriad points float in the wind.
i watch the last ones move before my eyes,
and cannot have enough wine pass my lips.
from "winding river" du fu
23 comments:
They were so in touch with nature; even in the peace of the bush we have distractions, like a plane flying overhead. It's not easy to get away from it. I like the last line where the poet is drowning sorrows because spring is at an end. It's a lovely pastime, sitting on a river bank, wine in hand. :)
As always, I am really enjoying this series of vignettes of your gentle highly personalized nature observations and the paintings that you pair with them. I am curious: do you generally write reflections inspired by the paintings you post or look for paintings that reflect what you have written? Or is the interaction bidirectional and impossible to say which direction predominates? Either way they are lovely and help the reader viewer enter the paintings and enrich their contemplation.
Lovely peaceful words and picture, steven, to start my day. Have a nice one.
I suppose you are ready for summer up there but it is here with a vengeance already. May was the hottest May on record. It wouldn't surprise me for us to have triple digits in June, something that usually doesn't happen til August.
Lovely mixture of thoughts and media. Lovely post, much enjoyed.
alaine it's difficult to remember a time when i sat by a river without some form of distraction but i know i have. in many ways the poets of very long ago could probably get closer to nature for that very reason. steven
lorenzo what a great question! great because it touches at the heart of the creative process that drives this little place! all three of your suggestions are what takes place depending on my fortune. usually i begin with a phrase or a concept. i hold that idea and search through images or writing until something connects and holds. then i continue the process looking for text if i first find an image or vice versa. then i do whatever editing is necessary and begin the process of writing my own words. i bank those words for as long as it takes to get distance from them and then edit, rewrite, delete whatever is required. finally i place the whole together and see it, feel it, think about it. come back to it a handful more times and then post it. it's that simple. steven
weaver thankyou for visiting - i'm really glad it was nice for you. have a lovely day in the dale. steven
hi ellen - we've had a couple of weeks of high twenties low thirties celsius temperatures so it has felt like the summer for that time! more seasonal temperatures are arriving though. the pool's open now which is what brought the air temperature down!!! there's your weather forecast for southern ontario. steven
thankyou very much dave!!! steven
This post brought to mind how quickly youth matures. My boys are growning up and I'm worried their Spring will turn to summer too quickly...for me.
Steven, I'm so loving your rivery posts. ((sigh))
Lovely imagery, felt the desire... or pull of spring moving to summer... and smelled the air - mmmm!
A sweet, dreamy flow to these recent posts steven.
I really appreciate your reply to my comment and the little window into your creative process. It confirms what I already more or less figured, that a lot of work, thinking, feeling and editing goes into coming up with such beautiful and deceptively simple takes on the world around you.
In the blink of an eye, it goes.
Everything is transient.
butternut i'm on the same train as you. my boy is fifteen and my girl is thirteen. they are both getting ready to really begin their lives and all of a sudden i'm not necessary or whatever it used to be. which is good. lovely. magical. satisfying and then also frightening. steven
willow as the summer approaches (and in terms of the weather it's really already here!) i notice more flow to my life. more harmony. much much more peace. steven
valerianna - i love wet foggy rainy springs with days of sudden sunshine and flowers that magically appear. this hasn't been one of those springs - more of a sprummer. right into the heat and fully fledged full bore summer. which is a gift in its own way! steven
bonnie it may not last but i get your drift!! steven
hey lorenzo you're very welcome of course!! steven
friko this is the way it is. it seems like an eternity but it's really the blink of an eye. or nothing at all. steven
Drifting along, peacefully...thank you Mr. Mellow!
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