Thursday, February 16, 2012

Spring demands ...

running shoes and racing down wet streets. Leaping over puddles. Kite flying.  

I love the transitional seasons best. Autumn is my first love, but who could not fall for the moment you recognize the days are getting longer, and the air's losing its nip?

Here on the Sunshine Coast I imagine campfires on the beach and having friends over to play guitar. Parking on one of the beach logs with a glass of wine and watching the sun melt into the orange horizon.

Yesterday was about the yellow crocuses along the Davis Bay esplanade, and deciding, finally, to start documenting the shorebirds and ducks so I can recognize them without a doubt.

Yellow crocus.



Surfird.

Glacous-winged gull.
I always feel like a young girl again in spring. Today I bought a skipping rope (at a criminal price), and soon learned skipping's a little more difficult than I remember.


Better to have a friend holding the rope at either end, and chanting:

"Cinderella dressed in yellow, went to town to meet a fellow ..."

or

"My mother and your mother were out washing clothes ... "

On Valentine's Day, we took our ball gloves out on the beach and played catch. Years since I'd done that. Still love the smack of it. The jumping and stretching and chasing after.


I've noticed in my work, too, I'm frequently inserting references to childhood. 

From Wretched Beast, and the poem "Where He Takes Me":

"I am so simple. This is a tale of gusts
and sun, and I say: Close your eyes,

count to one hundred
in the the tall grass and find me, find me.

I am shadow leaping tree to tree, further, not far
from badger holes, deer dung, and fox."
_______________

An excerpt from "For You"

"and in this mew of light
I am a stone freed from a child's fingers

above a ravine, a trick
in measured-motion,. I wish you

had known the girl I abandoned in cattails
beside the forzen slough. Forever

in a suede jacket with fringes, wet mittens
caricaturing my hands. Shivering. Then, as now, sky

closing in, the cap of a blue-grey mushroom.
tidal. Winter winthin its waves."

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Places on the map.

Yesterday, exploring.
Observation: sometimes beauty
can be overwhelming.

Egmont

Egmont

Madeira Park
We had planned to explore Garden Bay, as well,
but couldn't fit it all into one day.
Aw: we'll have to go back.

Greg at the Back Eddy Pub in Egmont
(the dark clump of trees is an island ... the multi-millionaire
who lives there apparently helicopters to work in Vancouver every day)
 
The little things that amaze.

Ruby Lake Resort Bird Sanctuary

Stream in Sargeant's Bay Provincial Park
I was picking my jaw up all day.
West Coast Wilderness Lodge

Madeira Park

Saturday, February 4, 2012

February Fog

Today the fog rolled in and it never rolled out. 
Timing: today was the day we were going to go sailing with our friend, Claude, who owns a stunning 40 foot sailboat.

Claude

She's a beauty.

Greg takes lunch to the boat.

Shelley at the Stalashen Drive house.
It has been a wonderful weekend, despite the weather fogging up our plans.
Last night at 5:30 a friend called and said, "Come down the beach ... we're drinking wine and watching the sun set." We went, and that little party eventually moved over to another friend's house, also on Stalashen Drive.

Tomorrow is the Super Bowl party, at Claude's house, with all the usual suspects.

I love this place. I really, really do.