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Category Archives: Poetry
Gone Fishin’
Yesterday we closed the office here at Nathanguitars, due to various pressing issues:
- the Westy had to go in for a new water pump ($600)
- we needed new material for our ongoing series of watercolour sketches (see sketch below)
- my son and I went fishing (no luck)
- there was nothing else to do (???)
sketch #1 – June 27/16
Today is more of the same, only I don’t know yet just what that will be precisely. However, directly after breakfast we began a short series of poems typed on index cards:
Filed under Fishing, Poetry, Sketching, Typewriters, VW Vans
Haiku Sketchbook June 17
Mt Fuji painted
Hokusai, thirty six times
Me, BC Leg three
9 am: not hokusai #1
10 am: not hokusai #2
11 am: not hokusai #3
That gnome, known ‘m?
who’s that new gnome?
Filed under Animal psychology, Birds, Poetry, Sketching, Typewriters
To Buy or Not to Buy
Not forgetting National Poetry Month
That is the question, or is it?
Oh that people would pay to read this discontented blog and make it a glorious monetizing scheme this summer. Alas poor blog, I don’t know it, whomever.
As we honor William Shakespeare again, and again, and again – I mean there have been countless writers in the world in the last four centuries, have there not? I take this opportunity, or not, to write a sonnet and accompany it with some more pictures of eagles, which are irrelevant to the occasion, and the sonnet, or are they? Feel free, meanwhile, dear gentle readers, to read my words and feeling inspired, buy my book.
FRIDAY NIGHT
Down the gutters water runs in torrents
Springtime wind and rain returned today
Early heat had lulled us into torpor
When cold wet breezes blew as if to say
Sun or rain, who knows what blows tomorrow
The wild wind is this and here to stay
As rain washed down with sweet cold drafts of ale
Friday night’s the time for pizza treat
Listening to cool jazz tunes on the hi-fi
Sip sauvignon blanc with chocolate sweets
Rapid fire guitar notes set the tempo
Fading sky from blue turns into black
Flying fingers dance upon piano
Resting on the couch, we settle back
Filed under Birds, Photography, Poetry, Wildlife
Day Shift
Hobbled to the park to check on Bushtits
Left camera’s memory card plugged into computer
Returned to get it
Weather warm
Changed into lightweight shirt
Pollen everywhere
How long does a sprain last
My aching foot wants to know
I swallow some medicine
To ease my paltry suffering
But still I revel in being alive
Considering the alternative
What have I to whine about?
And today on my shift:
Filed under Birds, Photography, Poetry, Wildlife
Song of the Bushtit
From Wikipedia: The American bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus) is the only species in the family Aegithalidae found in the New World, and the only member of the genus Psaltriparus. In North America, it is referred to simply as “bushtit”.
Filed under Birds, Photography, Poetry, Wildlife
Shrikes 0 – Humms 1
Seeking elusive Shrikes
I scan the bush
ears pricked
But Shrikes, like
vagrant Pileated peckers
have moved on
So with dashed hope
of seeing a butcher bird
I turn homeward
But hark here’s a sight
before my eyes right
on low branch a-twitter
The head
fiery red
flashes like police
Without doubt
‘tis most
arresting
Filed under Birds, Photography, Poetry
Between Wet Squalls
Between wet squalls
sunshine and rainbows
the lake trail calls me
Down the street the trail forks
which is the road less traveled
on a circle?… no matter
I choose right
by far the most frequent choice
I am habituated
Prepared for whatever
two cameras ready
one for close up, one far away
At the floating bridge I wait
at hand the short telephoto
hoping to catch the muskrat
I’ve seen it rarely
small brown rodent in the rushes
shiny wet hairy junior football
Each time I see
it sees me too
I blink and it’s gone
In the bushes I detect
kinglets, hairy woodpeckers, finches
they too elude the camera
Halfway round luck changes
a hummingbird, tired of diving
rests close at hand, flashing green
The sun peeks in and out
the rainbow waxes and wanes
several runners pass
At the Garry Oak meadow something very tiny
another hummingbird
even smaller – maybe a Calliope
Sun in my eyes, I move down
into the grass to look for it
but it buzzes away
While I wait
from out of the trees
a Red Tailed Hawk appears
It makes a line
straight towards the tree
the lone tree it calls home
In the field I look up
there looping about the sky
an eagle soars
Perfectly lit by the low sun
the eagle circles
while I focus
Later on I reflect on pictures
the tiniest and the
mightiest of birds
Filed under Birds, Photography, Poetry
a day in the life of a blog
Some days I just want to make some marks with a typewriter, if only to justify the collection. Typing is like therapy in a strange way, you press the keys and a physical reaction occurs, leaving you with a mark on paper. It is a feedback loop of sorts, direct, simple, immediate. And it has the added benefit of being quite capable of creating something you can read, criticize, laugh at, enjoy, loath and keep for along long time (almost forever). Typing is like Polaroid photography! My old Professor of Architectural History wrote a book in which he proposed a number of different analogies as ways to interpret the history of architecture. Polaroids didn’t come into that, but had they done so I’m sure my father would have understood; he was a big Polaroid fan and had a number of Polaroid cameras, starting with the original, and ending with the SX 70. His pictures, which were many, were all of what I mention here; laughable, pitifully bad sometimes, yet a reminder of a day or an event that would last and last. Unfortunately all those photos seem to have vanished! So much for posterity. But still, the possibility exists, and that itself makes Polaroids, and typewritten pages different from other ways of recording moments in time…
A blog is like typing and like Polaroids, is it not? You can just sit down and post something, and there it is as a record of a moment in time. How long it might endure is anyone’s guess however. But I do have a shoe box full of the typewritten bits I’ve posted here over the past years, should some future person wish to read them and be amused, or bored..
SOME PHOTOS, C/W THOUGHTS:
colourful, good bokeh
matching warm greys
how does a neck bend that way?
common, yet noble Robin, your beak is crusty with dirt
cormorant in the last light of day, what are you looking at?
Filed under Animal psychology, Birds, Photography, Poetry, Typewriters
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