i'm odd & full of love.

(Upper Kananaskis Lake, looking to Ubithka Mabi (Nesting of the Eagle - Stoney name), a beautiful cradle-like mountain... )

(driftwood and pebbles, shore of Upper Kananaskis Lake)

Words for the Wind -- part 3 -- Theodore Roethke

Under a southern wind,
The birds and fishes move
North, in a single stream;
The sharp stars swing around;
I get a step beyond
The wind, and there I am,
I'm odd and full of love.

Wisdom, where is it found? --
Those who embrace, believe.
Whatever was, still is,
Says a song tied to a tree.
Below, on the ferny ground,
In rivery air, at ease,
I walk with my true love.

What time's my heart? I care.
I cherish what I have
Had of the temporal:
I am no longer young
But the winds and waters are;
What falls away will fall;
All things bring me to love.

* * *

Lately I am very much absorbed in Mr. Roethke's poetry... it is very comforting for giddy/excited/melancholy/anxious/grateful/in-awe/full-of-love/important feelings (e.g. pretty much the state of my brain right now). It is also very much a kindred spirit to my own writings, in a very complimentary way -- I read little bits & often instantly think of something I wrote in a very different way, but still the same.

His writing is like Wordsworth's in its reverence for all things, but even more direct, connected to his subjects... & just so full of such love, love in the most vast yet intimate sense, it makes me weep. I like to think that Roethke reminds me a little of my father, sometimes -- my father is not at all friends with poetry, but he often says very poetic things very much unconsciously, & so sometimes I think this would be something like what my father would write if he was a poet -- he writes of land the way my father taught me to love it & know it, & so I think of him, & also my grandfather (mother's father) whom I never knew. But I've been told he loved everything like this too, the same gentleness in his soul.