The Inbetween

I identify with this. Especially the hair. And the soup. And the beliefs.

Hoarfrost Magic

There is nothing quite as beautiful

As a frozen winter scene

At times with proper moisture

Hoarfrost crystals can be seen

It’s like climbing into another world

As thick ice forms on everything

Nothing else is quite the same

As what these crystals bring

Beauty beyond anything else

Forms on the world around

Gathering up and clustered

Just like a frozen shroud

There’s a stillness in the air

When Hoarfrost crystals form

The quiet world is engulfed

From this beautiful winter storm

So if you are so fortunate

To see the hoarfrost magic

Grab your camera and capture

Nature’s icy antics!

-Marilyn Lott

Yorkshire Dales

Northern England, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful places on earth. And I feel I must clarify why I have this opinion. There are beautiful natural places that are untouched by human hands, up high in the mountains, or things like waterfalls or places deep in the rain forest or remote in the desert. There are beautiful human designs like the pyramids or stone henge or the bright houses of the East coast. And then there is beauty half way in between, where nature and culture collide. This is the Yorkshire Dales. Civilization exists within the stark natural landscape and has adapted to the conditions there. From the rolling hills, the rocky soil, and the mist and rain results isolated stone houses, sheep pastures as far as the eye can see and strong stubborn farmers. The Dales comes to rely on tourism more and more as small-scale farming becomes unviable, but I hope it never changes too much. Directions by Joseph Stroud How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world. Take a plane to London. From King's Cross take the direct train to York. Rent a car and drive across the vale to Ripon, then into the dales toward the valley of the Nidd, a narrow road with high stone walls on each side, and soon you'll be on the moors. There's a pub, The Drovers, where it's warm inside, a tiny room, you can stand at the counter and drink a pint of Old Peculiar. For a moment everything will be all right. You're back at a beginning. Soon you'll walk into Yorkshire country, into dells, farms, into blackberry and cloud country. You'll walk for hours. You'll walk the freshness back into your life. This is true. You can do this. Even now, sitting at your desk, worrying, troubled, you can gaze across Middlesmoor to Ramsgill, the copses, the abbeys of slanting light, the fells, you can look down on that figure walking toward Scar House, cheeks flushed, curlews rising in front of him, walking, making his way, working his life, step by step, into grace.

Feeling Farm-ish

No Tool or Rope or Pail by Bob Arnold It hardly mattered what time of year We passed by their farmhouse, They never waved, This old farm couple Usually bent over in the vegetable garden Or walking the muddy dooryard Between house and red-weathered barn. They would look up, see who was passing, Then look back down, ignorant to the event. We would always wave nonetheless, Before you dropped me off at work Further up the hill, Toolbox rattling in the backseat, And then again on the way home Later in the day, the pale sunlight High up in their pasture, Our arms out the window, Cooling ourselves. And it was that one midsummer evening We drove past and caught them sitting Together on the front porch At east, chores done, The tangle of cats and kittens Cleaning themselves of fresh spilled milk On the barn door ramp; We drove by and they looked up-- The first time I've ever seen their Hands free of any work, No tool or rope or pail-- And they waved.

Cars

Ode to My 1977 Toyota Barbara Hamby [Could also read "Ode to my 1984 Volkwagen"] Engine like a Singer sewing machine, where have you not carried me--to dance class, grocery shopping, into the heart of darkness and back again? O the fruit you've transported--cherries, peaches, blueberries, watermelons, thousands of Fuji applies--books, and all my dark thoughts, the giddy ones, too, like bottles of champagne popped at the wedding of two people who will pass each other on the street as strangers in twenty years. Ronald Reagan was president when I walked into Big Chief Motors and saw you glimmering on the lot like a slice of broiled mahi mahi or sushi without its topknot of tuna. Remember the months I drove you to work singing "Some Enchanted Evening"? Those were scary times. All I thought about was getting on I-10 with you and not stopping. Would you have made it to New Orleans? What would our life have bee like there? I'd forgotten about poetry. Thank God, I remembered her. She saved us both. We were young together. Now we're not. College boys stop us at traffic lights and tell me how cool you are. Like an ice cube, I say, though you've never had air conditioning. Who needed it? I would have missed so many smells without you-- confederate jasmine, magnolia blossoms, the briny sigh of the Gulf of Mexico, rotting 'possums scattered along 319 between Sopchoppy and Panacea. How many holes are there in the ballet shoes in your back seat? How did that pair of men's white loafers end up in your trunk? Why do I have so many questions, and why are the answers like the animals that dart in front of your headlights as we drive home from the coast, the Milky Way strung across the black velvet bowl of the sky like the tiara of some impossibly fat empress who rules the universe but doesn't know if tomorrow is December or Tuesday or June first.

My dream house

The Farmhouse by Reed Whittemore Our house is an old farmhouse, whose properties The town has gradually purchased, leaving it Only a city lot and a few trees Of all that wood and busheldom and breeze It once served. It is high and square, And its lines, such as they are, have been muddled by several Conflicting remodelers, whose care In widening, lengthening, adding on, letting in air Has left it with four kinds of windows, three porches And a door that leads to a closet that is not there. The city houses around us have borrowed from verse And the Old Dominion; their cosmopolitan Muddle is elegant next to ours. We think of moving, and say we'll add no more dollars To those already spent making a box Of what was, is and will be, forever, a box, When there's land. empty and unboxed, down a few blocks. Waiting. We say this as we pull down, pull up, push out And generally persevere with our renovating-- That is, making new again--knowing That houses like our house are not made new again Any more than a man is. All that growing Up and away from the land, that bowing To impersonal social forces that transform Wheat fields into rows of two-bedroom ramblers Must be acknowledged; but the warm Part of our country boy will not form. It remains, behind new windows, doors and porches, Hugging its childhood, staying down on the farm.

Not Only the Eskimos

Not Only the Eskimos by Lisel Mueller We have only one noun but as many different kinds: the grainy snow of the Puritans and snow of soft, fat flakes, guerrilla snow, which comes in the night and changes the world by morning, rabbinical snow, a permanent skullcap on the highest mountains, snow that blows in like the Lone Ranger, riding hard from out of the West, surreal snow in the Dakotas when you can't find your house, your street, though you are not in a dream or a science-fiction movie, snow that tastes good to the sun when it licks black tree limbs, leaving us only one white stripe, a replica of a skunk, unbelievable snows: the blizzard that strikes on the tenth of April, the false snow before Indian summer, the Big Snow on Mozart's birthday when Chicago became the Elysian Fields, and strangers spoke to each other, paper snow, cut and taped, to the inside of grade-school windows, in an old tale, the snow that covers a nest of strawberries, small hearts, ripe and sweet, the special snow that goes with Christmas, whether it falls or not, the Russian snow we remember along with the warmth and smell of our furs, though we have never traveled to Russia or worn furs, Villon's snows of yesteryear lost with ladies gone out like matches, the snow in Joyce's "The Dead," the silent, secret snow in a story by Conrad Aiken, which is the snow of first love, the snowfall between the child and the spacewoman on TV, snow as idea of whiteness, as in snowdrop, snow goose, snowball bush, the snow that puts stars in your hair, and your hair, which has turned to snow, the snow Elinor Wylie walked in in velvet shoes, the snow before her footprints and the snow after, the snow in the back of our heads, white that white, which has to do with childhood again each year.

Our prairies

High Prairie Farming William Notter There's never enough of the right kind of rain, and always too much of what we get. e've got no need for casinos-- keeping the farm is enough to gamble on. If the seed doesn't blow out of the ground in December, the wheat gets laid down flat in the fields by hail come summer. Spring blizzards get the calves, and one year my corn was nothing but rows of stalks from softball-size hail a month before harvest. That storm ruined my shingles and beat the siding right off the neighbour's house. A little hail and wind can't run me off, though, and I'll keep dropping the well until the aquifer dries up like they've said it would for years. We may not know what it's going to leave us with, but we can see our weather coming. When those fronts blow across the fields, trailing dust and rain, we've got time to get the cars in the shed, and ourselves into the basement if the clouds are green. Next morning I go out to see where the dice fell. Everything's glazed and bright with the dust knocked off and the sun barely up. The gravel on the roads is clean-washed pink, and water still hangs on the fence wires and the pasture grass. Sometimes I need to call the county about a washed-out road, or the insurance man about a field stripped clean. When I'm lucky I can shut the irrigation pumps down for a day or two and give the well a rest. I l ike to drive right into it sometimes when a storm comes up, lightning arcing all directions over the hills, and the slate-blue edge of the front clean as a section line. There's an instant in that border where it's not quite clear but not the storm when everything seems to stop, like my wheels have left the road. The light turns spooky, dust just hangs, the grass glows like it's ready to spark and catch on fire. Then the motor strains, fat raindrops whack the tin and glass like the racket from a flock of blackbirds, hundreds of them scattering off a stubblefield.

Monday morning poem

Can you believe how fast Christmas is coming? I can't. But I'm excited. Things to do this week, the last full work week before Christmas: - Get some research done so that I can start writing Thesis Chapter One after Christmas holidays. - Write the postman a Christmas card and attach the his chocolates and put them in the mailbox for him to get. - Plan something Christmas-desserty to have with A&C when they come later this week. - Pick up a marzipan pig for the prize for Christmas dessert. - Finish our folded-paper ornaments, inspired by special Danish design. - Send Christmas cards and the last of the parcels. - Finish my knitting projects that are Christmas presents. And I'm sure there's many more pre-Christmas things along with the daily menial tasks that have to be done before now and next Tuesday! And today's poem (definitely fits under the category of "nonstop nonsense." ;) Any prince to any princess Adrian Henri August is coming and the goose, I'm afraid, is getting fat. There have been no golden eggs for some months now. Straw has fallen well below market price despite my frantic spinning and the sedge is, as you rightly point out, withered. I can't imagine how the pea got under your mattress. I apologize humbly. The chambermaid has, of course, been sacked. As has the frog footman. I understand that, during my recent fact-finding tour of the Golden River, despite your nightly unavailing efforts, he remained obstinately froggish. I hope that the Three Wishes granted by the General Assembly will go some way towards redressing this unfortunate recent sequence of events. The fall in output from the shoe-factory, for example: no one could have foreseen the work-to-rule by the National Union of Elves. Not to mention the fact that the court has been fast asleep for the last six and a half years. The matter of the poisoned apple has been taken up by the Board of Trade: I think I can assure you the incident will not be repeated. I can quite understand, in the circumstances, your reluctance to let down your golden tresses. However I feel I must point out that the weather isn't getting any better and I already have a nasty chill from waiting at the base of the White Tower. You must see the absurdity of the situation Some of the courtiers are beginning to talk, not to mention the humble villagers. It's been three weeks now, and not even a word. Princess, a cold, black wind howls through our empty palace. Dead leaves littler the bedchamber; the mirror on the wall hasn't said a thing since you left. I can only ask, bearing all this in mind, that you think again, let down your hair, reconsider.

More, more and more snow...

We just got in from shovelling the driveway and sidewalk for the SECOND time today. It's just snowing and snowing and snowing. And it's beautiful. As the result of the snow, Cookies and Carolling at the church was cancelled, and J&M decided not to brave the QEII Highway and drive to Calgary, at least not tonight (can't blame them). But, Rachel and Trev DID come and I can't help but grin just thinking about them. I'm SO glad they're in Canada again and we can visit with them. They're just plain old great people and I love them. Plus, I think they wished this weather upon us, because they wanted to experience true Canadianness again, and that's just fine by me. December Moon May Sartin Before going to bed After a fall of snow I look out on the field Shining there in the moonlight So calm, untouched and white Snow silence fills my head After I leave the window. Hours later near dawn When I look down again The whole landscape has changed The perfect surface gone Criss-crossed and written on Where the wild creatures ranged While the moon rose and shone. Why did my dog not bark? Why did I hear no sound There on the snow-locked ground In the tumultuous dark? How much can come, how much can go When the December moon is bright, What worlds of play we'll never know Sleeping away the cold white night After a fall of snow.

More snow

You've been missing my poem posts, haven't you? Well I've been saving this one for the perfect moment. The snow has been so incredibly beautiful the last two days. Calgary doesn't get many soft fluffy dumps of snow that don't immediately melt or are blown into hard crusty drifts. Yet this lovely wondrous goodness has been ours for a moment, although it is three degrees above zero right now, and it's supposed to get up to six today, and all our lovely snow will be gone. So, we must treasure it while we can. Boy At the Window Richard Wilbur Seeing the snowman standing all alone In the dusk and cold is more than he can bear. The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare A night of gnashings and enormous moan. His tearful sight can hardly reach to where The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes Returns him such a god-forsaken stare As outcast Adam gave to Paradise. The man of snow is, nonetheless, content, Having no wish to go inside and die. Still, he is moved to see the youngster cry. Though frozen water is his element, He melts enough to drop from one soft eye A trickle of the purest rain, a tear For the child at the bright pane surrounded by Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear.

Thinking

It's can't help but be a good day when I have a cup of steaming hot coffee with a healthy glug of eggnog in it. And when K&K are coming over for supper. This morning I started reading the second book of poetry compiled by Garrison Keillor. This book much more has a theme...after all, they are "Good Poems for Hard Times." Keillor writes "This is a book of poems that if I knew you better and if you were in a hard passage I might send you one or two of along with a note, the way people used to do, believing in the bracing effect of bold writing....These poems describe a common life. It is good to know about this. I hope you take courage from it." So far I've read the first section, entitled "Kindness to Snails," and almost every poem made me tear up. Maybe I'm just in a teary mood at present. Actually, that's quite possible. On the other hand, perhaps one's soul should always be open to experiencing strong emotions of one sort or the other; to being empathetic to sorrow and joy, to be compassionate, to throw caution to the wind and make oneself vulnerable to love and hurt.

For a Five-Year-Old by Fleur Adcock A snail is climbing up the window-sill into your room, after a night of rain. You call me in to see, and I explain that it would be unkind to leave it there: it might crawl to the floor; we must take care that no one squashes it. You understand, and carry it outside, with careful hand, to eat a daffodil. I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails: your gentleness is moulded still by words from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed your closest relatives, and who purveyed the harshest kind of truth to many another. But that is how things are: I am your mother, and we are kind to snails.

Story-Poem

Sir Patrick Spens Anonymous The king sits in Dumferlin town Drinking the blood-red wine: Oh where will I get a good sailor To sail this ship of mine? Up and spake an eldern knight Sat at the king's right knee: Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor That sails up the sea. The king has written a broad letter And signed it with his hand, And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens Was walking on the strand. To Noroway, to Noroway, To Noroway o'er the foam, The king's daughter to Noroway, 'Tis thou maun bring her home. The first line that Sir Patrick read A loud laugh laughed he; The next line that Sir Patrick read A tear blinded his eye. Oh who is this has done this deed, This ill deed done to me, To send me out this time of year To sail upon the sea? Make haste, make haste, my merry men all; Our good ship sails the morn. Oh say not so, my master dear, For I fear a deadly storm. Late, late yestreen I saw the new moon With the old moon in her arm, And I fear, I fear, my master dear, That we will come to harm. They hadna sailed a league, a league, A league but barely three, When the air grew dark and the wind blew lou,d And growly grew the sea. Oh our Scotch nobles were right loth To wet their cork-heeled shoon, But long ere all the play were played Their hats they swam aboon. Oh long, long may their ladies sit With their fans into their hand Ere ever they see Sir Patrick Spens Come sailing to the land. Oh long, long may the ladies stand With their gold combs in their hair Waiting for their own dear lords, For they'll see them no more. Half o'er, half o'er to Aberdour It's fifty fathoms deep, And there lies good Sir Patrick Spens With the Scotch lords at his feet.

Hope

A friend of mine often reminds me to look for the "sparkles of joy" in my day. And I think that can be extended beyond individual days...without hope and joy, we would despair--and it would not be difficult to despair in the world today. But "sometimes things don't go, after all, from bad to worse." May it happen to you. Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh Sometimes things don't go, after all, from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel* faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail, sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well. A people sometimes will step back from war; elect an honest man; decode they care enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor. Some men become what they were born for. Sometimes our best efforts do not go amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to. The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow that seemed hard frozen: may it happen to you. *Muscadel: wine from muscat grapes

Mandarin Orange Season

Today's poem is in honour of the goodness of sweet mandarin oranges available everywhere these days. And in honour of all things good, like walking in the fog (which we did yesterday) and beautiful new babies, and the simple joy life can contain. The Orange Wendy Cope At lunchtime I bought a huge orange-- The size of it made us all laugh I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave-- They got quarters and I had half. And that orange, it made me so happy, As ordinary things often do Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park. This is peace and contentment. It's new. The rest of the day was quite easy. I did all the jobs on my list And enjoyed them and had some time over. I love you. I'm glad I exist.

Alden Nowlan

A friend of mine sent me a message recently and told me about a Canadian poet who I'd never heard of and probably should have. I spent a couple of hours reading his work yesterday...he describes a Canadian experience so accurately. I had a hard time choosing which poem to share, as there are quite a number from the little reading I did that are sharable. But you'll just have to take this one, which I concur with my friend is quite lovely, and if you like it, borrow an Alden Nowlan collection from the library. Something I like about poetry is the writers' ability to describe a situation or personality so succinctly. Like this one: Canadian Love Song by Alden Nowlan Your body's a small word with many meanings. Love. If. Yes. But. Death. Surely I will love you a little while, perhaps as long as I have breath. December is thirteen months long, July's one afternoon; therefore, lovers must outwit wool, learn how to puncture fur. To my love's bed, to keep her warm, I'll carry wrapped and heated stones. That which is comfort to the flesh is sometimes torture to the bones.

This is Just to Say

Today's poem(s) is one that made me giggle the first time I read it in my poetry anthology when I was in the second year of my English degree. Who puts their plums in the icebox anyway?

This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

But today in my perusal of this new edited collection of poetry, I came across a gem: a response to William C. Williams. Poor Williams...he never knew what the chilled-plum lady would do in retribution. Maybe he'll think first next time.

This is Just to Say by Erica-Lynn Gambino (for William Carlos Williams) I have just asked you to get out of my apartment even though you never thought I would Forgive me you were driving me insane

Lending Out Books

Today's poem just struck me as funny. Lending Out Books by Hal Sirowitz You're always giving, my therapist said. You have to learn how to take. Whenever you meet a woman, the first thing you do is lend her your books. You think she'll have to see you again in order to return them. But what happens is, she doesn't have the time to read them, & she's afraid if she sees you again you'll expect her to talk about them, & will want to lend her even more. So she cancels the date. You end up losing a lot of books. You should borrow hers.

How shall we pray?

As I was doing my devotions this morning, I was struggling with the fact that I don't really feel like I can pray. I don't know how to approach God and I often feel like I merely come to Him with my list of requests (lists of all sorts are one of my little-known talents) and hand them over and then leave. It's not real quality listening for God's direction time, or confessing my sins. I feel like I'm always on the go too much to just sit and listen. But I came across this poem this morning, and it expresses a lot of what I can't. Address to the Lord by John Berryman Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake, inimitable contriver, endower of Earth so gorgeous & different from the boring Moon, thank you for such as it is my gift. I have made up a morning prayer to you containing with precision everything that most matters. 'According to Thy will' the thing begins. It took me off & on two days. It does not aim at eloquence. You have come to my rescue again & again in my impassable, sometimes despairing years. You have allowed my brilliant friends to destroy themselves and I am still here, severely damaged, but functioning. Unknowable, as I am unknown to my guinea pigs: How can I 'love' you? I only as far as gratitude & awe confidently & absolutely go. I have no idea whether we live again. It doesn't seem likely from either the scientific or the philosophical point of view but certainly all things are possible to you, and I believe as fixedly in the Resurrection-appearances to Peter and to Paul as I believe I sit in this blue chair. Only that may have been a special case to establish their initiatory faith. Whatever your end may be, accept my amazement. May I stand until death forever at attention for any your least instruction or enlightenment. I even feel sure you will assist me again, Master of insight & beauty.

Poems and things

Yesterday I at last borrowed from my parents two books of collected poems, edited by Garrison Keillor. I have been wanting to read these poems since Mum and Dad first read from them to me last year. But one does not have time to read poetry whilst enrolled in the first year of grad school. But year one has come and gone (and I'm still alive!) and now I can delight in the deliciousness of these poems. And I can't wait. I fully intend on sharing my favourites with you, dear readers, and here is your first. Brent and I have been getting up early the past couple of weeks in an effort to use our days more efficiently and enjoy the middle-of-the-day sunshine when we can. (And interestingly enough, my friend Shannon made a similar decision right at the same time as us!) So this poem seemed apropos. At least by Raymond Carver I want to get up early one more morning, before sunrise. Before the birds, even. I want to throw cold water on my face and be at my work table when the sky lightens and smoke begins to rise from the chimneys of the other houses. I want to see the waves break on this rocky beach, not just hear them break as I did all night in my sleep. I want to see again the ships that pass through the Strait from every seafaring country in the world-- old, dirty freighters just barely moving along, and the swift new cargo vessels painted every color under the sun that cut the water as they pass. I want to keep an eye out for them. And for the little boat that plies the water between the ships and the pilot station near the lighthouse. I want to see them take a man off the ship and put another up on board. I want to spend the day watching this happen and reach my own conclusions. I hate to seem greedy--I have so much to be thankful for already. But I want to get up early one more morning, at least. And go to my place with some coffee and wait. Just wait, to see what's going to happen.