"Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after." Henry David Thoreau

Cosmos, Jungho Lee

From The Wood Between. Check it out.

"Horses" by Jim Harrison

Faith. Katya Hannula

In truth I am puzzled most in life

by nine horses.

I’ve been watching them for eleven weeks

in a pasture near Melrose.

Two are on one side of the fence and seven

on the other side.

They stare at one another from the same places

hours and hours each day.

This is another unanswerable question

to haunt us with the ordinary.

They have to be talking to one another

in a language without a voice.

Maybe they are speaking the wordless talk of lovers,

sullen, melancholy, jubilant.

Linguists say that language comes after music

and we sang nonsense syllables

before we invented a rational speech

to order our days.

We live far out in the country where I hear

creature voices night and day.

Like us they are talking about their lives

on this brief visit to earth.

In truth each day is a universe in which

we are tangled in the light of stars.

Stop a moment. Think about these horses

in their sweet-smelling silence.

"Horses" by Jim Harrison from Songs of Unreason. © Copper Canyon Press, 2011.

"In cold spring air" by Reginald Gibbons

"Line of Trees in Marshy Landscape" by Piet Mondrian, 1905-6

In cold

                       spring air the

         white wisp--

            visible

    breath of

                    a blackbird

    singing--

                          we don't know

to un-

                               wrap these blind-

    folds we

                          keep thinking

 we are

                           seeing through

"January Thaw" by JYA

Marc R. Hanson

Somewhere between shed and barn

he enters the heart of the fog.

Everything trembles, lets go and falls away

like icicles in spring.

In white space he waits breathless.

One sharp birdsong splits the veil thin as itself.

Silence fills the rent as quickly as night

heals the wound of a star's falling.

He awakes in the heart of the fog,

marvels at the weight

of the bucket pulling at his hand,

of himself pressing into the earth.

The Longest Night

A beautiful cut paper/silhouette stop motion animation observing the Winter Solstice. Music, words, art and animation by Angie Pickman. Thanks to The Wood Between.

Days Off

Illustrations by Frank E. Schoonover, 1877 - 1972, appearing in the book Days Off by Henry Van Dyke, published in 1907.

"Over in Montana" by William Stafford

"Winter Peregrine" by Nicholas Oberling

Winter stops by for a visit each year.

Dead leaves cluster around. They know what is

coming. They listen to some silent song.

At a bend in the Missouri, up where

it’s clear, teal and mallards lower

their wings and come gliding in.

A cottonwood grove gets ready. Limbs

reach out. They touch and shiver.

These nights are going to get cold.

Stars will sharpen and glitter. They make

their strange signs in a rigid pattern

above hollow trees and burrows and houses—

The great story weaves closer and closer, millions of

touches, wide spaces lying out in the open,

huddles of brush and grass, all the little lives.

"Over in Montana" by William Stafford from Even In Quiet Places. © Confluence Press, 1996.

Joseph Tomerelli Fish Drawings

Joseph Tomerelli can draw fish. These are from a collection of fish of the Salish Sea.

Read more about them HERE.

"The Call Away" by Robert Bly

"The Prairie Waits for Rain" by Dave Goldman

A cold wind flows over the cornfields;

Fleets of blackbirds ride that ocean.

I want to be out of here, go out,

Outdoors, anywhere in wind.

My back against a shed wall, I settle

Down where no one can find me.

I stare out at the box-elder leaves

Moving frond-like in that mysterious water.

What is it that I want? Not money,

Not a large desk, not a house with ten rooms.

This is what I want to do: to sit here,

To take no part, to be called away by wind.

I want to go the new way, build a shack

With one door, sit against the door frame.

After twenty years, you will see on my face

The same expression you see in the grass.

"The Call Away" by Robert Bly from Like the New Moon, I Will Live My Life. © White Pine Press, 2015.

"On Reaching the Age of Two Hundred" by Donald Hall

"Head of a Bearded Old Man" by Simone Cantarini (1612 - 1648)

When I awoke on the morning

of my two hundredth birthday,

I expected to be consulted

by supplicants

like the Sibyl at Cumae.

I could tell them something.

Instead, it was the usual thing:

dried grapefruit for breakfast,

Mozart all morning, interrupted

by bees’ wings,

and making love with a woman

one hundred and eighty-one years old.

At my birthday party

I blew out two hundred candles

one at a time, taking

naps after each twenty-five.

Then I went to bed, at five-thirty,

on the day of my two hundredth birthday,

and slept and dreamed

of a house no bigger than a flea’s house

with two hundred rooms in it,

and in each of the rooms a bed,

and in each of the two hundred beds

me sleeping.

"On Reaching the Age of Two Hundred" by Donald Hall from The Selected Poems of Donald Hall.

© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015. 

Three Poems for Thanksgiving

"Home for Thanksgiving" Currier and Ives Print of a painting by George Currie, 1867

IN BLACKWATER WOODS

by

Mary Oliver

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies

into pillars

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

"In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983. 

A LONG AND GRACIOUS FALL

by

David Budbill

A long and gracious fall this year.

The leaves are down. Gardens: emptied,

manured, tilled, smooth, and waiting.

Mower and tiller serviced and put away.

Smoker put away, as is the summer table.

Prayer flags, windsocks and their poles: down.

Twenty-foot homemade badminton poles,

peace flag at the top of one, store-bought net—

all down and put away for another year. No more

outdoor summer chores.

Fall planting — peonies and tiger lilies — done.

Summer flower stalks removed, beds mulched,

a blanket for the cold. Fall pruning done.

Woodshed roof hammered down and sealed again.

Cellar closed. Drive staked and flagged so the

snowplow knows where to go.

What else is there to do? Finally, for once, we are ready

for the snow. Ready now to come inside. Time now for

words and music, poems and shakuhachi. Time now

to light some incense, sit and stare at candlelight.

"A Long and Gracious Fall" by David Budbill, from Happy Life. © Copper Canyon Press, 2011.

A PRAYER AMONG FRIENDS

by

John Daniel

Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive

with one another, we walk here

in the light of this unlikely world

that isn't ours for long.

May we spend generously

the time we are given.

May we enact our responsibilities

as thoroughly as we enjoy

our pleasures. May we see with clarity,

may we seek a vision

that serves all beings, may we honor

the mystery surpassing our sight,

and may we hold in our hands

the gift of good work

and bear it forth whole, as we

were borne forth by a power we praise

to this one Earth, this homeland of all we love.

"A Prayer among Friends" by John Daniel, from Of Earth. © Lost Horse Press, 2012. 

"As imperceptibly as Grief" by Emily Dickinson

Sarah Ross

As imperceptibly as Grief

The Summer lapsed away—

Too imperceptible at last,

To seem like Perfidy—

A Quietness distilled

As Twilight long begun

Or Nature spending with herself

Sequestered Afternoon—

The Dusk drew earlier in—

The Morning foreign shone—

A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,

As Guest, that would be gone—

And thus, without a Wing

Or service of a Keel

Our Summer made her light escape

Into the Beautiful.

"Five Wishes" by Anne Porter

Kacho Fugetsu, Mid-nineteenth century, Meiji period, lithograph

I’d like to have a wild bird

Perch on my hand

A sparrow or

A chickadee

Sudden with her sharp feet

And fragile daring

I’d like to see again

The etchings Rembrandt made

Of stories from the Bible

Though they’re as plain

As Bethlehem’s hay

A radiance fills them

And I would like to visit

The Laguna Indians

And their old church

Made of whitewashed clay

With logs for rafters

And in it their Madonna

To whom they’ve given

A white lace apron

And I would like to learn

To accept my death

To accept our dying

That strange dawn

So deeply scandalous

That God himself wept

At the death of his friend

I’d like to find

The shrine of Chimayo

Where the lame leave crutches

I’d like to go there

With my daughter Katie

It would be enough

Just to be there

Without any miracle.

"Five Wishes" by Anne Porter from Living Things. © Zooland Books, 2006. 

"The Night Migrations" by Louise Gluck

"Night Reflections" Robert Kipness 1969

This is the moment when you see again

the red berries of the mountain ash

and in the dark sky

the birds’ night migrations.

It grieves me to think

the dead won’t see them-

these things we depend on,

they disappear.

What will the soul do for solace then?

I tell myself maybe it won’t need

these pleasures anymore;

maybe just not being is simply enough,

hard as that is to imagine.

"The Night Migrations" by Louise Glück from Averno. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.

"Talk About Walking" by Philip Booth

"Walking Man" by Jack Baumgartner

Where am I going? I’m going

out, out for a walk. I don’t

know where except outside.

Outside argument, out beyond

wallpapered walls, outside

wherever it is where nobody

ever imagines. Beyond where

computers circumvent emotion,

where somebody shorted specs

for rivets for airframes on

today’s flights. I’m taking off

on my own two feet. I’m going

to clear my head, to watch

mares’-tails instead of TV,

to listen to trees and silence,

to see if I can still breathe.

I’m going to be alone with

myself, to feel how it feels

to embrace what my feet

tell my head, what wind says

in my good ear. I mean to let

myself be embraced, to let go

feeling so centripetally old.

Do I know where I’m going?

I don’t. How long or far

I have no idea. No map. I

said I was going to take

a walk. When I’ll be back

I’m not going to say.

"Talk about Walking" by Philip Booth from Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999 (Viking Press).

"Angling Reveries" by C.N. Ward

"Evening Fireside Stories" by Louis Rhead, 1914

From Fisherman's Verse, compiled by Williams Haynes and Joseph LeRoy Harrison.

Duffield and Company, New York, 1919.

"And Now it's October" by Barbara Crooker

"October Moonrise" by Glenn Rudderow

the golden hour of the clock of the year. Everything that can run

to fruit has already done so: round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy

pears, black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells,

the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat. Flowers that were once bright

as a box of crayons are now seed heads and thistle down. All the feathery

grasses shine in the slanted light. It’s time to bring in the lawn chairs

and wind chimes, time to draw the drapes against the wind, time to hunker

down. Summer’s fruits are preserved in syrup, but nothing can stopper time.

No way to seal it in wax or amber; it slides though our hands like a rope

of silk. At night, the moon’s restless searchlight sweeps across the sky.

"And Now it's October" by Barbara Crooker from Small Rain. © Purple Flag Press, 2014. 

"The Sunday Swim, Comanche Trace" by Noel Crook

"Peaceful Canyon" by Roland Lee

The canyon ledge was steep and stark,

the pool below a patch of dark.

The canyon wrens careened our names

and from the narrow overhangs

the lupines leaned and clung, like us,

to any purchase they could muster.

We grappled down the frowning rock

then bolted for the swimming dock,

slowed to strip down to our skins,

the bullfrogs plopped to beat us in.

Other children, dark and bare,

had bathed and played and squatted there

and left us shining arrowheads

along the rocky water’s edge.

The velvet slime squeezed through our toes,

the water greened our feet and rose

around our hips and pulled us in,

filled our arms and cupped our chins.

Its coolness seeped into an ear.

The minnows threaded through our hair.

We floated there along with clouds,

clouds our ceiling, clouds our ground.

"The Sunday Swim, Comanche Trace" by Noel Crook from Salt Moon. © Southern Illinois University Press, 2015. 

"A Ritual To Read To Each Other" by William Stafford

"Fireflies" by Ito Sozan, 1926

If you don’t know the kind of person I am

and I don’t know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,

but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider--

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

"A Ritual To Read To Each Other" by William Stafford from Stories That Could Be True. © Harper & Row, 1982. 

Happy Birthday, Mary

It's Mary Oliver's birthday today, a celebration of a life lived deeply and given freely through poetry. No one else I know of has lived more in tune with the natural world--and with our humanity--than has Mary Oliver.

"Forest Sunrise" by Alfred Bierstadt (1830-1903)

MORNING POEM

Every morning

the world

is created.

Under the orange

sticks of the sun

the heaped

ashes of the night

turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches--

and ponds appear

like black cloth

on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.

If it is your nature to be happy

you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination

alighting everywhere.

And if your spirit

carries within it

the thorn

that is heavier than lead--

if it's all you can do

to keep on trudging--

there is still

somewhere deep within you

a beast shouting that the earth

is exactly what it wanted--

each pond with its blazing lilies

is a prayer heard and answered

lavishly,

every morning,

whether or not

you have ever dared to be happy,

whether or not

you have ever dared to pray.

"Morning Poem" by Mary Oliver, from Dream Work, 1986.