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Blossom
Ah, spring! Season of timelessness and transience, hope and heartbreak, arrivals and departures. The story of our life in a few swift weeks. Yet it is certainly not a season of grief. Wistfulness...
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Days
Do we grow wiser with age? Well, let's not get too carried away. Speaking for myself, the only piece of wisdom that I can provisionally claim in my seventh decade above ground (and within hailing...
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Present
I often feel that I have spent most of my life sleepwalking or daydreaming. Asleep at the switch. Nearly everything has escaped me. But each moment offers the possibility of redemption: a new...
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Wind
Is there anything as peaceful and as pleasurable as the soft buffeting of a warm wind in your ears as you walk abroad on a sunny day? A steady, yet gentle and enfolding, wind. A blue and gold day in...
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Peace And Quiet
"All I want is a little peace and quiet." A plaint from time immemorial. We mustn't make the mistake of believing that our particular moment in time is unique in its clamor, chaos, harriedness, and...
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Past Lives
Looking back into your past, you may see someone who resembles you, but who no longer exists. Yet, despite doubts and misgivings ("Who is that person?"), there is no getting around it: that vaguely...
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A Dream. Or Not.
Ah, the dreams of felicity that we carry around inside us! Who knows where they come from? Who knows how we go about contriving them? And where do we find the materials for these dreams?Consider, for...
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The Sun
Dear readers, you have heard me say this before (and you will no doubt hear me say it in the future): Life is far simpler than we make it out to be. It is nothing more (and nothing less) than an...
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The Sun: A Brief Addendum
It's funny how these things work. My most recent post, on Monday, was a paean of sorts to the sun. On the following day, for no apparent reason, I felt the urge to return to the poetry of James Elroy...
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A Life
In March of this year, I shared E. K. Chambers's lovely poem written in memory of Thomasine ("Tamsin") Trenoweth. I was reminded of Tamsin, rest her soul, when I came across this a few days ago:Short...
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Eclipse
"Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily." La Rochefoucauld (translated by Stuart Warner and Stéphane Douard), Réflexions ou Sentences et Maximes Morales (1665). A wise observation,...
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Two Linnets, A Dove, And A Lark
When I am out on my daily walk, I often hear brief rustlings, chirpings, or wing-flutterings from within the bushes on either side of the path, or from off in the dim light of the thick evergreen woods...
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Asleep
I am easy to please. Or so I like to think. Perhaps this is merely a matter of growing old, evidence of a fond mind. "Or else I'm gettin' soft." Recently, for instance, I have spent a fair amount of...
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Nearly. Not Quite Yet.
Here is where we find ourselves: "Now it is September and the web is woven,/The web is woven and you have to wear it." Earlier this week, I watched a butter-yellow caterpillar crossing a path, headed...
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Visitants
Everyone we have ever known remains with us. Nothing we have ever experienced vanishes. This is not simply a matter of our ability to retain memories, be they good or bad. Rather, these people and...
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Bourne
The Oxford English Dictionary defines "bourne" as follows: "The limit or terminus of a race, journey, or course; the ultimate point aimed at, or to which anything tends; destination, goal." I first...
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What Happens
Early last week, I came across this: With the young trout in the valleyA leaf of the dwarf bamboo Floats away.Buson (1716-1784) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 4:...
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Here
The time has come, dear readers, to return once again to my "November poem." I beg your forbearance, for this is the sixth such visit. But I'm afraid that I never tire of this poem: its mystery, its...
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Light
I have never been to the Orkney Islands, but I have the impression that it is a world marked by a sharp contrast between darkness and light. This impression is based upon the poems of George Mackay...
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"A Merry Christmas, Friend!"
Our experience of Christmas changes as we grow older. I am not speaking of historical accidents and aberrations such as, for instance, self-regarding modern irony, or the equally self-regarding...
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