Full of Summer

This is the full of summer, this is all
Bold bumblebees have always dreamed about;
This floating is my rise that has no fall;
This steadiness my in that has no out.
And this my body's happiness -- the call
Persuading me to pause deep in today
As purple clover scents the swaying air
Bold bumblebees have always dreamed about.
I watch more ripeness ripening the way
A whirling orange blur of oriole
Blends with lake water blazing everywhere;
A hummingbird suspended at a rose
As if in mimic of the sun whose flare
Holds her eternal moment in my mind.
This is my opening that has no close;
This is my now with then now left behind
And icy wind a thought thought can forestall:
This is the full of summer, this is all.


Robert Pack

Save your day (Jose Gonzalez)

Sunscreen!

Transits of Venus (for Anne Marie)

Vancouver airport. I have crossed this space before,

leaving lovers -- a small planet moving slowly

over a vast and polished floor, circled by strangers.

Beyond the lounge window, grey skies, grey tarmac.

Straight white painted lines plane off across

the wide-winged delta and intersect the arc

of the horizon. I watch a train of luggage carts

cut a tangent towards me, towed through a bubble

of silence -- sound severed from me by glass --

and think of moon buggies, vehicles designed

to cross the surface of a satellite, exploring flat

grey plains, Mare Oscularum, Mare Incognita.

Transits of Venus occur perhaps too often

in my life. the inner planets, small separate

circles, cross the blazing surface of the sun

and then separate, depart to shine alone,

the wandering ones together only for a time,

contained by the bright circumference of love.

Alice Major

London Silence

Fountain Court, Temple, London, 1921

"The history of silence is one of London's secrets. It has been said of the city that its most glorious aspects are concealed, and that observation is wonderfully well fitted to account for the nature of silence in London. It comes upon the pedestrian, or traveller, suddenly and unexpectedly; it momentarily bathes the senses, as if going from bright light into a darkened room."

Peter Ackroyd, London - The Biography

March morning unlike others

Blue haze. Bees hanging in the air at the hive-mouth.
Crawling in prone stupor of sun
On the hive-lip. Snowdrops. Two buzzards,
Still-wings, each
Magnetized to the other,
Float orbits.
Cattle standing warm. Lit, happy stillness.
A raven, under the hill,
Coughing among bare oaks.
Aircraft, elated, splitting blue.
Leisure to stand. The knee-deep mud at the trough
Stiffening. Lambs freed to be foolish.

The earth invalid, dropsied, bruised, wheeled
Out into the sun,
After the frightful operation.
She lies back, wounds undressed to the sun,
To be healed,
Sheltered from the sneapy chill creeping North wind,
Leans back, eyes closed, exhausted, smiling
Into the sun. Perhaps dozing a little.
While we sit, and smile, and wait, and know
She is not going to die.

Ted Hughes

Shining Light

You are a shining light. You light up my life.

Perhaps my favourite 90's anthem, by a forgotten band called Ash. Combined with my love of submerged swimming in dappled light, weightless and free, could it get any more uplifting?!

Fuzzy

Montmartre dusk, Paris, October 2009

Night Breeze

Unexpectedly the windows open
Wide during the night. The rectangle
Swallows the bedroom, it's a different night where
Life turns inside out like a glove. A veined hand
Emerges, leaf of a negative
Hope on the phantom wall
Pointing towards what? The cliff of a lake
Sea-snows, lunar suns. A rough but tender
Tongue darts from it, paying no attention
To the guard-rails of speech.
Come unstuck, drawings, framed mirrors
The scribblings of the world
Slip from the walls docile and unafraid
Their fibers will be ripped.
A lamp gleams its star's hope in their wake
The sheets knot themselves for an escape
Exchange close body heat
For the sweet cold freedom of the clouds.


Claire Malroux
Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker

Cool

Falling asleep in the snowscape of the big double-bed
I wrap my hand around your hand until they catch fire

And the snow begins to melt and we sink down and down

Michael Longley - Snow Hole

This ethereal glass house, designed by the Santambrogiomilano group, has nothing to hide. Cool and clear, hidden in a snowy forest, I imagine climbing into that bed at night and watching the constellations spin and Northern Lights dance above me. Ice ice baby.

Heartless

Reminds me of being dumped by a Welsh wonder Bjork look alike called Kathryn when I was 14. Teenage angst and exercise book doodles!