Tag: Poetics of Place
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Ceiling Fan Reveal
Aerial photography fascinates, in part, I think, because it’s slightly superhuman. An omniscient perspective, removed from the familiar, human scale world we inhabit. For a moment we enjoy an eye in the sky vantage that augments our reality. This ceiling fan haiku explores another perhaps tangentially related experience of wind — both natural wind and…
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Dockside Monochrome
Mercurial, unsettled weather lately. Pendulum swings. Dark and light. Sunny and soggy. Unsettled hours and days. My moody meditation is inspired by this dockside monochrome. Snapped this photo after an unsuccessful first foray into waterskiing and freshwater surfing for the 2023 season. Too rough. Susan tried. A valiant effort. Abbreviated… Today’s words and thoughts are…
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Relics Rhymed
I’m verily inspired by potsherds and beach glass, coal fragments, and other detritus churned up on Rosslyn’s waterfront. Or disinterred from the yard while planting a garden or building a stone wall. I stall awhile and meditate on the process of fragmenting and the potential for reimagining artifacts. I wonder about dark or damaged backstories,…
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Make this Place Your Home
Looking down from my United Airlines window shortly after takeoff from Burlington I’m able to discern Rosslyn’s waterfront and backland, recognizable despite distortion caused by the crazed, milky portal bless. My eye-in-the-sky perspective of Essex, New York (and our Adirondack Coast “home sweet home”) tickled a lyric into my mind, and before I knew it…
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Column Flanked Vestibule
Tucked into the folds of the icehouse rehab scope of work some accomplishments stand out more than others. The garapa paneling in the bathroom, for example, has been a long, slooow labor of love many months in the making. Many stages and many hands have shaped this initiative, so anticipation has been building for many…
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Poetry of Earth
I missed my mark — Earth Day, April 22, 2023 — with this post extolling the poetry of earth. It was germinal then, and it remains germinal today (albeit marginally more mature?) Sometimes a seed germinates with exuberance, practically exploding into existence as if overcome with the glory of imminent bloom and fruit. Other times…
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Loft Shelving
An endoskeleton for the soon-to-be loft shelving has begun to take shape. Shop-built carcasses fabricated by Bernie Liberty have been delivered and installation has begun. Lining the north and south knee walls, these reading repositories will soon be lined with bound words. One further step toward completion of my icehouse loft study. Loft Shelving Haiku…
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When Lost, Poetry
When I first titled this post it was “If Lost, Poetry”. But it felt phony. If? Too hypothetical. We’re ALL lost from time to time. Provisionally lost. But… when lost, poetry. Fortunately former U.S. Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo, has the right words for us. “Without poetry, we lose our way” — Joy Harjo Exactly. And…
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Shirley Poppy
A day after my bride’s “polar plunge” in still frigid Lake Champlain, I’m swimming and drifting in the warm waters of Antigua, enjoying a free ranging conversation with one of my nephews, allowing salt and surf and steel band sounds (drifting intermittently from further up the shore) to exercise the sort of deep relinquishing that…
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The Art of Home
The art of home is a tidy title with an unpretentious posture. And yet it’s idealistic and evocative, ample and ambitious. Frankly, its restrained and self contained first impression is a little misleading. Maybe even a little ambiguous. What do I even mean? I’m not offering a catchy epithet for design and decor. Nor architecture. And…
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Impermanent Perspectives
Impermanent Perspectives (a reflection on the protean process of construction, ephemeral POVs, and a hint at the overlap with creative writing.)
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Ruffed Grouse
The male ruffed grouse in the photo above was documented on a Rosslyn wildlife camera about a year ago. Fancy fowl! And the two images below were recorded a few weeks ago. Rosslyn’s backlands are fortunately flush with ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus), a welcome reminder that wildlife gravitates — as if by some primal sense…