"no need to sparkle"

A snowflake was caught between two spent morning glories. We leave the flowers to dry on the vines, and then in the spring we crumble them open and scatter the seeds on the ground to grow into this year's vines. A second after this shot, the snowflake was lifted off by the wind, like a seed. 

As the snowflake rested with the seed pods I thought of Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own when she was settled in and absorbed in a good luncheon at Oxbridge: "No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself."

Is it prickly, or soft?

You won't know without touching.

Let's live the New Year as fully as we can!

out of the lace

The Only Portrait of Emily Dickinson 
by Irene McKinney


The straight neck held up out of the lace
is bound with a black velvet band.
She holds her mouth the way she chooses,
The full underlip constrained by a small muscle.

She doesn't blink or look aside,
although her left eye is considering
a slant. She would smile
if she had time, but right now

there is composure to be invented.
She stares at the photographer.
The black crepe settles. Emerging
from the sleeve, a shapely hand

holds out a white, translucent blossom.
"They always say things which embarrass
my dog," she tells the photographer.
She is amused, but not as much as he'd like.


photo: grape-leaf anemone

return to a meadow

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,

that is not mine, but a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,

an eternal pasture folded in all thought

so that there is a hall therein

that is a made place, created by light

wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am

I say are likenesses of the First Beloved

whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.

She it is Queen Under the Hill

whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words

that is a field folded.

It is only a dream of the grass blowing

east against the source of the sun

in an hour before the sun's going down

whose secret we see in a children's game

a ring a round of roses told.

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow

as if it were a given property of the mind

that certain bounds hold against chaos,

that is a place of first permission,

everlasting omen of what is.

— Robert Duncan

mums looking down at the end of November

"And the very act of living is a tide;

at first it seems to make no difference at all,

and then one day you look down

and see how much pain has eroded."

— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

the stems of Jackie's roses

Before winter, nature cuddles

Constellation of joy

soft

last stand

Silenced? Hardly.

apparent

They might be done in France, but they're still blooming here

morning glory

the anointed

Less complicated than it looks, or is it?

purple

drying hydrangea

late sun

Canada thistle