Tag: Poetry
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The Past Lives On
The past lives on in art and memory, but it is not static: it shifts and changes as the present throws its shadow backwards. — Margaret Drabble I return today to a recurring theme, a preoccupation perhaps, that wends its way through my Rosslyn ruminations and my collections of photographs and artifacts. While the past…
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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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66% Done, 33% To Go
This is my 243rd Rosslyn update in daily succession. It completes an 8-month streak of daily old house journaling, the 2/3 mark in my quest to post every day for one year. I marked an earlier milestone — six months in and six months to go — with a summary of the aspirations guiding these…
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Rosslyn Rapture
A meditative moment today to revisit “Rosslyn Rapture: A Bronze Sculpture by George McNulty” with a poem about the figure and an acknowledgment that memory can be an imperfect copilot. Perhaps the sub theme for today’s post should be derivative content? The image above is a digital watercolor derived from an edited and altered photograph…
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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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Vernal Equinox: Barred Owl Sighting
Welcome to spring! It’s currently 43° at Rosslyn, on target to hit 46° shortly. Sun is out. Snow is melting. Bulbs are bursting. So many remarkable signs and suggestions that the vernal equinox may indeed have marked the transition from winter to spring (daffodils and daylilies perking up, an auspicious sunset cloud formation, a handsome…
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Searching for Poetry
Searching for poetry, questing for questions that need no answers to matter and guide and enrich. This might be my epitaph. Some day. But not yet. I hope. Today, the vernal equinox, I awoke at 4:00 AM, eager to start cooking a wild boar roast I had thawed. Actually it wasn’t the roast that caffeinated…
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Paean for Pamuela
Sometimes we call her theair traffic controller —calibrating schedules,inventorying andcoordinating andunmuddling messes,managing myriadmicros and macros, andmultitasking Monday,Tuesday, heck, every day —also installing docks,feeding ducks and songbirds,soliciting bids andperhaps painting clapboardor pruning persimmons,brush hogging meadows, andwelcoming travel guests.In short she is all this —air traffic controller,conductor, ringleader,emcee and referee —but also cheerleader,advocate, confidant,colleague, and dear-dear friend.…
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Moonrise in March
Startled by the sightof lunar liftoffI slip-slide on ice,reel, rebalance, andthen I remember:a full moon risingtomorrow, tonightpenultimate nightof winter’s waxing.The March moon shimmerson unfrozen lake,saluting springtime’sassured/unassuredarrival two weeks —per the oracles,a frosty fortnightof whiplash weather —from this Monday eve.
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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.)