Friends In High Places…

Posted on April 15, 2012 by J. F. Booth

The garden holds many pleasures for me; the sounds of the wind through the trees, the colors of blossoms and leaves, the scent of earth and flowers. Perhaps most treasured among the garden’s delights are my friends  the song birds.  They dine at the feeder outside my kitchen window, nest in the houses I’ve provided for them around our yard, and sing their hearts out from my holly tree and deck railing.They bring color and music and energy to my life each time I pause to observe them.

The Carolina chickadee is probably my favorite. Or, is it the black-capped chickadee that’s won my heart?  Ah, there’s the rub. It’s very difficult to tell which bird you’re meeting.  They have trouble telling which is which themselves, and (shocking to tell) they interbreed.

But, I digress. What I enjoy about the chickadees is their general joie de vivre . They flit about the yard calling and singing all day long.  When they discover a food source, they call out, inviting other birds, even other varieties of birds to join them for the feast!

Which brings me to another thing I like about chickadees, they play well with others.  Because they are so generous in sharing food sources, other song birds cluster with the chickadees. Wrens and nuthatches, vireos and goldfinch listen for the chickadees’ announcements, “Here, step this way. Dinner is served!”  They gather together on my feeder – golds and reds, grays and black.  Such a beautiful cluster of feathered life.

Winter and summer, the chickadees call and sing, animating  my garden and my spirit.

Black-capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)...  (I’ve been unsuccessful at posting a little video I recorded on my iphone of my birdfeeder guests.  If anyone knows how to post an iphone video on the internet, please let me know.)

 

Posted in Nature | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Let Me Rephrase That!

Posted on April 5, 2012 by J. F. Booth

A quote, a line of poetry, a passage in a short story or novel – as I turn to reread old friends, I find their meanings transmogrified. (How about that for a 50¢ word?)  What I see and hear in the passage is quite different from how I interpreted those words in my callow youth.

At this point in my life (long past the middle-years,) I have read enough of my particular story to look at comments and experiences from a seasoned viewpoint.  Images and ideas are less scary, less serious, often less important than I’d once judged them…

Recently, I was rereading T.S. Eliot.  In college I found Eliot’s voice dark and his reflections off-putting.  But, I have changed, and while the words and lines remain the same, now I detect tang and  sweetness, even humor in his poetry.

In Four Quartets, “East Crocker,” Eliot fleshes out what I’m wrestling with:

 Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

Once the lines spoke to me simply of growing up, independence, aging.

Now, I smile at the strangeness of the world and recall my naïveté, thinking the world would grow familiar, less strange as my life unfolded.  And what did I care, at 21, for the Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Comic Book Poetry? Billy Collins’ s TED talk

Posted on April 2, 2012 by J. F. Booth

15 fascinating minutes… funny and wise and occasionally lovely.

Posted in Poetry, Visual Arts | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Good-by to All That…

Posted on March 28, 2012 by J. F. Booth
English: Hawthorn blossom. Dazzlingly coloured...

Image via Wikipedia

For the last eleven years, late March or early April brought a special thrill to my morning walks – the blossoming of the six English Hawthorn trees outside the U.S. Naval Academy‘s Main Gate.

Among the trees a modest marker and bronze plaque announces these trees as a gift from Captain John Smith. I silently thank Captain Smith for this thoughtful gift.

The Hawthorns’ blooms are always among the  first to appear, right along with the daffodils and forsythia. Their stark grey trunks don heady bouquets of dazzling pink and white blossoms that glow in the morning light. Their brilliant bouquets exude a halo of fragrance, fresh and slightly sweet.  I catch their aroma from around the corner, before I see the rosy petals against the Academy’s white, brick wall.

The awakening of the English Hawthorn has been an event I looked forward to each spring.  

But, these six, trees were more than just pretty faces. Their identities, like our own, were complex and intriguing.  

Continue reading →

Posted in Nature | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Don’t Fence Me In!

Posted on March 20, 2012 by J. F. Booth

Image

“Good fences make good neighbors.” I’ve heard that line quoted so often –  usually with an undertone of moral rectitude – “I know what is best here, where the line should be drawn.”

But there’s an ironic twist to our affection for this handy adage: The line comes from Robert Frost’s 1914 poem, “Mending Wall.”  The irony is that the poem argues for the opposite view ; fences do not make good neighbors – neither in our own back yards nor in the world .

The second half of the poem contains the heart of the matter:

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down…

Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry | 5 Comments