Sunset Sentinels, Missoula, Montana

“To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.” - Helen Keller (1880-1968)

Fall Harbinger, Missoula, Montana

The Wild Geese

by Wendell Berry

 from Collected Poems 1957-1982 (North Point Press)

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon

and wild grape, sharp sweet

of summer's end. In time's maze

over fall fields, we name names

that went west from here, names

that rest on graves. We open

a persimmon seed to find the tree

that stands in promise,

pale, in the seed's marrow.

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear,

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye

clear. What we need is here.

In Clover, Missoula, Montana

“…I but seem to see the fluent plain

Rise toward a rain of clover-blooms, as lakes

Pout gentle mounds of plashment up to meet

Big shower-drops. Now the little winds, as bees,

Bowing the blooms come wandering where I lie

Mixt soul and body with the clover-tufts…”

-From “Clover – Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats”, by SidneyLanier (1842-1881)

Clover Revery, Missoula, Montana

“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

One clover, and a bee,

And revery.

The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.”

― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems

Bicycle and Blooms, Missoula, Montana

“My two favourite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything. The perfect day: riding a bike to the library.”
- Peter Golkin

Fall Descends, Missoula, Montana

And so, leisurely,
fall descends upon the town -
whirligigs
    winding 
  twirling
      down;
so it begins.

- c.hull

Bluebird Content, Missoula, Montana

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence