Sunday, April 30, 2017

this little light of mine

an old gospel tune reimagined in performance by mavis staples . . . . 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFAPS1jQClY

Saturday, April 29, 2017

Friday, April 28, 2017

it seems a shame

it seems a shame to rake away this beauty but then, when i do, more beauty will follow in its place ...


Thursday, April 27, 2017

rising . . . .

among the not so small joys . . . in the back garden side-by-side, wondering at the new growth making its way out of the soil . . . plants ready to flower that had been planted last autumn . . . i'd forgotten i'd planted them, let alone their names . . .


Wednesday, April 26, 2017

the one light

sitting by the river, waiting for the sun to make its way through the cloud bank . . . .


Tuesday, April 25, 2017

buds . . . .

she always returns in such abundance!


Monday, April 24, 2017

assemblage


Sunday, April 23, 2017

Saturday, April 22, 2017

yard duty

along the fence line . . .



Friday, April 21, 2017

a lovely evening

my thursday night dinner date - my daughter lexie . . .


Thursday, April 20, 2017

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

little flowers are arriving

little flowers are arriving on the western wall of our home . . . 
i kneeled down to see this little sweetheart up close and i remembered these words . . . . 

"I know someone who kisses the way a flower opens" . . . 
mary oliver


Tuesday, April 18, 2017

mid spring reflections

a quiet ride in along the eastern shore of the river . . .



Monday, April 17, 2017

this little bunny

i see this little sweetheart quite often on my walks and my rides.


Sunday, April 16, 2017

the return of the turkey vultures

every year around this time, the turkey vultures return to this street for two or three weeks.
they camp out in a spruce grove just west of my home.  they are massive birds with wingspans of five to six feet!!


Saturday, April 15, 2017

snowdrops!

on my ride in, i saw these little beauties trembling in a chilly wind .....


Friday, April 14, 2017

Thursday, April 13, 2017

swan

windy winds and rainy rains 
brought this coil of birch bark 
and this little puddle 
together on our driveway . . . .


Wednesday, April 12, 2017

walks

"Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious." Mary Oliver


Tuesday, April 11, 2017

unperturbed

drinking snowmelt . . .




Monday, April 10, 2017

good morning!

sunshine! birds!
little chunks of ice falling from the trees! 
good morning!


Sunday, April 9, 2017

wet grasses on stone

like hair on a pillow . . .


Saturday, April 8, 2017

little arrivals . . .

close to the ground -
looking for the little green arrivals . . .


Friday, April 7, 2017

the weathered trunk . . .


Thursday, April 6, 2017

making bracelets

walking home in the rain from a metal stamping workshop . . . .


Wednesday, April 5, 2017

entanglement






watching the reflections of clouds passing across the skin of a small woodland pool . . . .




Entanglement


A librarian in Calcutta and an entomologist in Prague
sign their moon-faced illicit emails,
“ton entanglée.”

No one can explain it.
The strange charm between border collie and sheep,
leaf and wind, the two distant electrons.

There is, too, the matter of a horse race.
Each person shouts for his own horse louder,
confident in the rising din
past whip, past mud,
the horse will hear his own name in his own quickened ear.

Desire is different:
desire is the moment before the race is run.

Has an electron never refused
the invitation to change direction,
sent in no knowable envelope, with no knowable ring?

A story told often: after the lecture, the widow
insisting the universe rests on the back of a turtle.
And what, the physicist
asks, does the turtle rest on?

Very clever, young man, she replies, very clever,
but it’s turtles all the way down.

And so a woman in Beijing buys for her love,
who practices turtle geometry in Boston, a metal trinket
from a night-market street stall.

On the back of a turtle, at rest on its shell,
a turtle.
Inside that green-painted shell, another, still smaller.

This continues for many turtles,
until finally, too small to see
or to lift up by its curious, preacherly head
a single un-green electron
waits the width of a world for some weightless message
sent into the din of existence for it alone.

Murmur of all that is claspable, clabberable, clamberable,
against all that is not:

You are there. I am here. I remember.

Jane Hirshfield, 1953

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

bark



When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees, 
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
 but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Mary Oliver

Monday, April 3, 2017

scrambling through the undergrowth

among the small joys: a beautiful early spring afternoon spent scrambling through the undergrowth on the east side of the otonabee river . . . .





Sunday, April 2, 2017

Saturday, April 1, 2017

spring snow . . .

riding in through a wet, white world . . .