Springtime

This lovely flower here is a Skunk Cabbage and it grows in the marshy, wet areas of which we have in abundance here in Western Oregon. It is a common every day plant but one that is very beautiful I think.You will see whole patches of them in wet boggy places that you wouln't think anything could grow in. Everywhere here spring is showing herself the frogs croaking their mating call at night and the trees with their tiny buds about to burst forth.

I have found that in the past few years as I get older I have a renewed love of poetry and how poets with just a single word can craft a landscape which we all may visit with their words. Lately, I have been reading Billy Collins poetry and this one I am about to share is one of my favorites for the time and place I presently am with my life. It is from Picnic, Lightning.

My life

Sometimes I see it as a straight line
drawn with a pencil and ruler
transecting the circle of the world

or as a finger piercing
a smoke ring, casual,inquistive,

but then the sun will come out
or the phone will ring
and I will cease to wonder

if it is one thing,
a large ball of air and memory,
or many things,
a string of small farming towns,
a dark road winding through them.

Let us say it is a field
I have been hoeing every day,
hoeing and singing,
then going to sleep in one of its furrows,

or now that it is more than half over,
a partially open door,
rain dripping from the eaves.

Like yours, it could be anything,
a nest with one egg,
a hallway that leads to a thousand rooms--
whatever happens to float into view
when I close my eyes

or look out a window
for more than a few minutes,
so that some days I think
it must be everything and nothing at once.

But this morning, sitting up in bed,
wearing my black sweater and my glasses,
the curtains drawn and the windows up,

I am a lake,my poem the empty boat,
and my life is the breeze that blows
through the whole scene

Stirring everything it touches__
the surface of the water, the limp sail,
even the heavy, leafy trees along the shore.

I want to thank each of you who visit here and all those who commented on my last post. I am so grateful for your kind words and taking the time to visit here.

I encourage you to visit my Photography links in the sidebar these photographers are all great. I also have a new post up at the Mermaids Bookshelf(link in sidebar) . This is also an interesting link and one I think I might do myself it is Diego Time .