lissome light of evening

{my back alley, last week before the last of the melting}

{light in the front yard elm, last week also}

* * *

(more fragmented poem-bits)

skin is warm, the scent of dust
i carry through the inland sea –

sprung from that red earth
& cradled in the hipbone of a prairie

awash in light; the saltmetal taste of blood,
lost rabbit’s foot, bright flush of the poppy;

black-starred ground, a thousand seeds
& a second sky inside of me.

* * *

(я нічого не чую, не чую нічого)

once i held you &
felt your ribs under my fingers
like little wooden xylophone rungs
i let my nails go soothing, echoes
tap-tapping to curl up in your hair –

& my sigh stifled, like
a floorboard squeaking i pray
you don’t feel the little tremors
beneath my feet, i can’t let you
feel the beating, taut
trembling shame of my telltale heart –

* * *

This is one of my favourite songs right now -- this new version of the song Cosmia (click there for mp3) by Joanna Newsom. It's on her brand-new EP, 'Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band...'
Her voice is so swooping & her lyrics gorgeously potent. When she sings

dried rose petal, red-brown circles
framed your eyes and stained your knuckles

it's so lovely I don't know what to do. She's mentioned in an interview that this song is about the death of a close friend, & that just makes the whole thing all the more aching. I'm especially in love with all the imagery of the moths, moths as messengers, their little dusty hearts, all that harp-plucking! Something that is alive in the evening, dwelling in spaces between:

beneath the porch light, we've all been circling
beat our dust hearts, singe our flour wings
but in the corner, something is happening!
wild Cosmia, what have you seen?

(the 'cosmia' she's singing about is probably cosmia trapezina)

seeds, leaves, lights.

{elm helicopters, in the park on my way home...}

Here are some poem fragments (some fragments more fragmenty than others) to accompany these illuminated leaves. Not sure what the poem-bits will do next, but they will bask in the sunshine right now.

* * *

how light soothes madness:

all winter i left the candles burning, my sad tallow brain
melting slowly all over the kitchen floor;

but now the sun comes, leaves me fluid, slush running
in the streets slick with the rainbow sheen of oil

& in the muddy gutter winter left a wind-torn lost mitten
dead pigeon yellowed skeleton going to dust

but i pool curbside, a flowing laugh, reflecting elm
branches rooted in blue sky,

the geese flying home calling:
echoing over the gravelly riverbank, the silty delta

shines back all that light & the constant
beyond us

* * *

{leafy parchments, in the river valley when there was still snow}

* * *

how light wakes the earth,
presses its fingers down through
melting snow & coaxes

those young bulb-flowers
pushing up waxy beaks
through dead leaf-lids, her eyes
now open & thirsting at the sun;

how light washes our faces,
each ray like a sweet wafer
on our tongues

& this is what saves us:
(this communion)

its strong hands part strands
of despairing, this something
that exists regardless; how this
earth (for)gives.

* * *

{old wild rose stems, in the river valley a few weeks ago as well}

* * *

you don’t have to tell me;
i know there is no cure.

bloodsap only lasts for
so long, the marrow going
brittle, & all the sweet syrup dry.

yet somehow there is always
something to soothe the sadness:

your bone-white aspens, the fuzz
of their buds alit, the haloes of catkins,
& above that chaotic hopak of crows;

dry seeds of the elm shake out
the winter, wind’s sussurous, soughing rustle,
translucent parchments shining

over bending red willows, cut branches
in their green shock of brightness,
the simple gift of what saves us –

we twist & ache but
there is always that dark wet earth
with us,

all those seeds springing simply from
the chornozemlya of the heart –

* * *

archers of an afterthought.

{little stick-saplings at the place in my forest called the edge of the world}

{feather caught on a wild rose bush, also at riverlot}

{a rabbit's lost foot. alas, unlucky rabbit!}

There's a beautiful song on Andrew Bird's new album 'Armchair Apocrypha' that I am loving very much right now, a simple little elegaic song called Scythian Empires (click there for the mp3). It's not just that I have a thing for my distant, horse-back-marauding, golden-grave-good-making, ornate-anthropomorphic-animal-tattoo wearing ancestors, but because this song is such an elegant little thought about the varying degrees of (im)permanency that everything, that we all, possess.

Scythian Empires by Andrew Bird

five day forecast bring black tar rains and hellfire
while handpicked handler's kid gloves tear at the inseams

their Halliburton attaché cases are useless

while Scotch-Guard Macintoshes shall be carbonized

now they're offering views of exiting empires
such breathtaking views of Scythian empires

Scythian empire
horsemen of the Russian steppe
Scythian empire
archers of an afterthought

routed by Sarmatians
thwarted by the Thracians
Scythian empire

kings of Macedonia
and the Scythian empire

muddy with twigs & branches.

{red willows, riverlot, april 7th}

{grove, riverlot, this past saturday}

{illuminated windblown grass, riverlot field , also this past saturday}

There is a very new Björk song out now, called Earth Intruders (Mark Stent Extended Mix, mp3) ... It's a powerful song, with all her words creating these images of bones being reconstructed, muddy excavations, endless marching pulsing on, everything flashing by quickly, fragmented -- but with a certain serene urgency despite all that, & it makes me think of spring, the agency of the earth, & how the earth renews itself, heals itself, & forgives.

willow sunday

{pussywillows! actually, these aren't willow trees; they're aspen poplar. so these are pussypoplars}

{i did find actual pussywillows down by the river, but there were only a few so i didn't want to cut them to take home -- so i brought the more abundant poplars instead. they're still soft, just like kitten feet}

* * *

Bud' vysokyj yak verba, zdorovyj yak voda, i bahatyj yak zemlya.
(Be as tall as the willow, as healthy as water, as rich as the earth)

-- Ukrainian blessing for Willow (Palm) Sunday

vesna prijshla! spring sprung!

A belated happy spring, with little beaky alien-tulips from the yard, pushing up their hungry waxy leaf-mouths to the sun.

I saw Paris to Kyiv perform at the Citadel last weekend. Alexis Kochan's voice was so gorgeous -- warm, with both kindness & urgency. Between songs, she read a little snippet of a poem by Oleh Lysheha, which made me very very happy, since I really love his work. She read an excerpt from Swan, which I found translated here (by Lysheha & James Bradfield):

...At last I entered your bright museum
Over the river channel
Just to get warm. The cold rain
Seemed not to stop,
And no one was there . .
But in the corner, under glass
A pair of tall boots was drying
After lying idle somewhere
In a peat bog or a swamp . .
The feet that owned them
Are stones now
Under rippled laces,
With sharpened toes . .
I couldn’t stop staring . .
[...]
Does anyone believe
I have been there? . .
That my feet felt so comfortable
In those shoes? . .

And Alexis said that's how she feels when she hears the old old songs, & I know exactly what she means. Especially when the seasons are changing, fall & very much the spring -- the dark crumbling earth & the shiny white bone-trees of the weeping birches, the wind tasting like dust & light.

hometown.

{budding poplar in the field near my old elementary school}

{dried-up rose hips in red willow park, by the river}

{half-frozen shopping carts abandoned in the river. somehow a sad summation of suburbia}

{self-portrait, red willow park. along the bike path where the trees grow over in flickery archways in the summer long & straight all the way to sturgeon road}

Some photos taken on a walk Friday afternoon, from the bus exchange to my parents' house, my old house. Not yet spring. That's all.

* * *

Also, The Mountain Goats. John Darnielle writes the simplest, most oddly compelling lyrics. & the way he sings them, he can get away with saying things like 'our love is like the border between Greece and Albania' & it sounds so very apt. & very true. & his words, they etch themselves on the tip of my brain -- 'new found rich brown deep wet ground' has been floating around in my mind & off my tongue since I first heard 'Going to Scotland'. Other times, his phrases are much more unassuming like 'wild sage growing in the weeds' or 'a tricky young southerly wind' yet they are are also evocative. & they all sound like they were created in a single moments, like the songs sprang fully formed into life, dropped onto his head like pinecones, little seed-note spilling out. Like they floated around until, shadowing him like birds soaring, then descended suddenly & overtook him & he simply had to pick up a guitar, press record & sing before they flew away again.

The Mountain Goats -- International Small Arms Traffic Blues [mp3] (from the album 'Tallahassee')
TMG -- Whole Wide World [mp3] (from 'Sweden')
TMG -- Going to Scotland [mp3] (from 'Nothing for Juice')

blood oranges, poem edit, etc.

{a very delicious organic Moro blood orange, my afternoon snack today.}

{Though I've been assured they do get regular oranges in Whitehorse, will I be able to eat blood oranges there next spring?}

{so tasty! so sweet & juicy! fruit of springtime}

Aside from gratuitous blood orange love, I have edited my ghazal poem slightly. Using an established form in a poem is still very novel to me. Other than experimenting with tanka, haiku, & sonnets (oh, junior high english class) it is something I just haven't done. I find some poetic forms ridiculously contrived, there is something so elegant & elegaic about the ghazal. Despite the second couplet's repeated phrase, there's something freeing about it.

* * *

of waxwings.

they come as a gift, this sudden crescendo of waxwings:
a blue sky shattered, feathered filaments of waxwings.

& when i dragged you outside, took you from your tea
it was just to share with you the gift of waxwings –

& they are darting so intricately, this ephemeral embroidery
edging our eyes, the clouds with ashy stitches of waxwings.

& from beak to beak they pass elm-bark and ash-berries,
your lips were red as the throat-flutes of waxwings –

& how they alight! then leave, reverberate urgency
surging through us softly a warm wind of waxwings –

& an echoing srreeeee leaves an ache so sharp, saddened
as grey wings sweep the air, the dissolving of waxwings.

& their migration: simplicity that deconstructs me,
leaves me earthbound & hungry for the flight of waxwings –

& would that i could hold you so tightly, though i see
we can’t be as whole as a flocking of waxwings –

our bright hearts lay on the snow, remnants of chokecherries
how graceful waves scatter us, trees dripping of waxwings –

o would that i could speak to you & ease you of grieving!
but my words flutter inchoate, distant keening of waxwings.

ghazal, ma belle

{a(nother) waxwing in the elm on my street}

Recently I've discovered the joy of writing ghazals; there's something ridiculously addictive about their little couplets, something giddy about creating their lilting rhythm. I'm working on one now that isn't very good, but it's the first I've ever tried. You should also read something ('Even the Rain') by Agha Shahid Ali; he definitely knows what he's doing, & his are delicious. I'm just playing right now.

"[In a ghazal] each couplet must be like a precious stone that can shine even when plucked from the necklace though it certainly has greater luster in its setting."

-- A. S. Ali

(for someone who loves to use enjambement, it was difficult to be so tight with every line)

anyway, this one is not done (it's still having metrical problems) but it was lovely to write. certainly much more enjoyable than homework.

* * *

of waxwings

i like to think they come as a gift, this sudden crescendo of waxwings:
a blue sky shattered with feathered filaments of waxwings.

& when i dragged you outside, took you from your tea
it was just to share with you the gift of waxwings –

& they are darting so intricately, an ephemeral embroidery
edging our eyes, clouds with ashy stitches of waxwings.

& from beak to beak they pass elm-bark and chokecherries,
your lips were red as the throat-flutes of waxwings –

& an echoing srreeeee leaves an ache so sharp, saddened
as grey wings sweep the air, the dissolving of waxwings.

& how they alight! then they leave, reverberate urgency
surging through us softly is a warm wind of waxwings –

& their migration: simplicity that deconstructs me,
leaves me earthbound & hungry for the flight of waxwings.

& would that i could hold you so tightly, though i see
nothing can keep us as whole as the flocking of waxwings –

& now our bright hearts lay on the ground, remnants of chokecherries
how graceful waves scatter us, trees dripping of waxwings –

o would that i could speak to you of all i am feeling!
but my words flutter inchoate, distant keening of waxwings.

some bright morning

{sunlight on the kitchen floor, tiptoe}

I am in love with Olena Kalytiak Davis's first book of poetry, And her soul out of nothing. She has another but I haven't read it yet. I especially like a poem called 'It was a coffin that sang' because it likens God to a gypsy:

"...And what a Gypsy
God was, stamping his boots
and tying his scarves
across one eye, like a lunatic crazed
by what he had set going:
each wild drunk
dancer, the heel-to-toe
of each reckless life...."

It makes me think of Emir Kusturica films, their chaos, everything so fierce & bleak. & how everytime I watch a film it destroys me, I get angry at him for making me cry, yet I keep wanting to see more of them because of the illumination, the truth that everything is all the same. & you can glean these moments of such calm in all the absurdity & something so joyous even in the despondency, grace stuck in there like that little sugar cubes that are shoved into the mouths of the bride & groom so that they might at least start their new life with a little sweetness, because who knows when the world will end --

sweeping pine, swept-up poem.

{pine tree by Belgravia School}

{slushy tree reflection on my street}

{looking up into the centre of world that is in the pine branches of the tree by Belgravia school}

{self-portrait, observing the upper branches of aforementioned lovely tree}

{the red pine bark on that tree soft as my grandmother's skin was, once}

* * *

A number of poems are living inside my head, slowly trickling out like snowmelt. This one I'm posting is still very sketchy -- but I do find it really helps me, to put them up here, it lets me look at them critically. & I enjoy the half-finishedness, really, because reading them in their awkward states compels me to make them better, so then I can post a finished version that has hopefully evolved.

* * *

today would be
her ninety-second birthday;
[...] <-clearly unfinished stanza! bah

tuesday’s false fecundity
with all those pampushky ( little ukrainian shrove tuesday donuts)
& wednesday, ashen; winter
slowly ending, each droplet
of meltwater on the eaves

hits my eye with the
migraine-dull precision;
pools of slush hissing rotten
fuchsia & oxidized copper,
fingernail moon widening

its jagged eclipse, then disappating,
then pain; my icicles for eyes, just
lying in the damp washcloth darkness
while outside everything sways
in the sweaty arms of the chinook.

snow seeps, blackens the
red pine’s bark. peeling tendrils
dissolve into papery light nesting
in the branches, soft like the
skin of an old woman,

cool as the paper of her
skin i kissed just after she died;
& that’s when all it’s all there
again, sadness flaring aura-sudden,
weeping trails of light & i

dig my little treefingers down
through fibrous bones, i cling to
the roots of our sharing, singing,
suffering that leaves her soil
& grows straight through my pines.

& it’s her ninety-second birthday,
grave lying under snowdrifts, &
soon the ache will stop. & this
inherited hemiplegic memory
a nervous purgative it fills me

with an clean echoing clarity
with a closeness so luminous
an ache in the spine of the world
for how this pain can heal us,
how we are both birthed into the light

reprised.

{somebody lost their wings. left them under a tree in arts quad, or crashed there, icarus-like.}

I poked these two poems a little more. I am done (for now) with the first one -- it's not great but that's all it can be right now. The second one I think I am liking a bit better, but I'm still not entirely satisfied. (If I put it up here, I might be able to find a new angle from which to poke.)

prometheus or icarus?

i)

when my mother was young she feared nothing more than the flash of the bomb the rehearsed rush to duck & cover facedown & curled up

on classroom carpet, fetal turtle waiting for the shadows to pass, for ash to rain down like chalkdust, tasting the sicksweet bile of separation in her thoughts:

mother / daughter, flesh / skeleton, that’s what her brothers told her, they said it would be like being engulfed by the sun –

all the families on her street with their little concrete beehives built in their backyards, filled with their tin-can & water-barrel honeycombs, that’s where she’d run

if the siren sounded, where they’d all hide from the fire falling, & the long winter, ashen
& cursing a terrible creation, the theft of that blasted fire –

ii )

just this month white-coats slowly slipped the hands of the doomsday clock two dashes closer, now it’s sitting at five to midnight but i’m not scared of that –

i heard that up in iqaluit they’ve realized they’ve not yet got a word for the bird
with a breast ruddy as seal blood, they’ve never seen one before –

those robins gone north to warmth, & orange trees perish in frosty california.
a woman in the maldives watches her pearls, sands swiftly dissolving, her neighbours falling into the sudden swell of the sea –

& she isn't so worried about nuclear fission / fusion, no,
she knows we’re already melting our wings of thread & beeswax, all those people

with their wheels & their oil bring us

just seconds & seconds closer to the sun –

* * *

[no name yet]

when my father meditates
his spine gleams straight just like a winter birch
with each white knot of vertebrae
fecund & flowing with the ghosts of a sweet sap,
amber plasma / a healthy blood –

(the ash of last year’s platelets, clotted, hang
from broken branches, stems of the useless transplants)

yet down in the valley ice blossoms on water;
he sees the new white cells forming clean in the cold, lulling veins of the stream,
lymphocytes crunching, collecting on the bank –

somewhere in all this he finds
all these little benedictions, they rustle like
the peeling paper-bark, his breath rushing
in exhale / inhale –

(that sweet psychasthenia lets him forget his bones,
their bitter greenish marrow, empty homes)

just forget the body, only remember breath –

when my father meditates
he brings the whole world rushing
into his throat, lungs flashing their alveoli
of white weeping birches splayed across the sky
to embrace / to heal / to rest

wanderings in slush, last thursday

{walking in snow slushy & soft like tepid ice cream}

{someone's grade nine social studies homework in the bus shelter by mckernan school. it reads "gorbachev was an energetic young university-educated leader who wanted to make change"}

{my camera was propped up, causing some overexposure, but i do like the red of my leggings & the red trim of the bus shelter windows...}

{dried-up rosehip doorbell -- along 114th street just before university ave.}

{there was a little flock of waxwings greeting me from the elms along 116th st. when i got home...}

Song: Sad & Beautiful World -- Sparklehorse

typology of window-frosts.

{bedroom window, lightning strike surrounded by fern-waves}

{bedroom window, stray seed surrounded by mimosa fronds}

{front window covered by icy swiss-chard like leaves}

A note: There will be fewer words & more images in this space now. {It's easier to maintain lucidity with pictures than with sentences} Poem-bits will still show up -- they like the fresh air before they are finished & put into a chapbook or zine.

Tse vse.

* * *

Dust of Snow (by Robert Frost)

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

spelunking.

In attempts to avoid doing things I'm supposed to be doing right now, I went spelunking about the forgotten folders & files of my computer. I found things from the summer that make me happy. Item 1: The above pictures, of sunsets coming down from Highwood Pass in Kananaskis just past solstice. Item 2: Tiny fragmenty poem-thing, the equivalent of archaeological pot-sherds. That is all.

[poem-fragment]

came over aeolian plains to nato-oh-siskoom
i am sitting in the holy springs
against the cold glass railings, the shadows
of tamarack, hemlock

blind & soft into the dark, black mountain;
dissolve into the indigo of the sky, wings flutter urgent /
gentle over the envelope of the valley,
comfort of omnipresent rock –

i pretend i’m calm / i pretend i’m permanent.
floating here in the pool,
my heart crashing up again the sky
like the mooncoloured belly of a moth –

[that was written in banff in august in the hot springs pool. well, not written down whilst i was in the pool, but it came then & i remembered it for later. nato-oh-siskoom is the name for banff in siksika (blackfoot) ]

prometheus or icarus?

{a furnace in the trees, looking over the river valley from sask. drive, last last wednesday afternoon }

I'm not overly fond of the sound, the phonetic texture, of the German word Weltschmerz ('velt-shmerts'), but it really is so evocative, so apt. It's not just summed up by a gloss like 'world-weariness'. & it's not necessarily pessimistic. You can feel it, but not be tired of the world at all -- you are just feeling such a profound sadness, something that aches because of all that is bad, cruel & abhorrent in a world that is, (I believe) at its heart, so wonderful, divine, & good.

* * *

I admit I wasn't immediately taken by the music of Joanna Newsom. Bu, oh! soon I was smitten. Her turn of phrase makes me smile, & her harp makes me ache. Here is 'En Galop' (mp3!)

And I go where the trees go,
and I walk from a higher education
(for now, for hire)

And it beats me, but I do not know. [repeat]

Palaces and stormclouds
the rough, straggly sage, and the smoke
and the way it will all come together
(in quietness, in time)

(Joanna Newsom, 'En Galop')

* * *
Petition here.

Rough notes (which may grow into poem) below:

i)

when my mother was young
she feared nothing more
than the flash of the bomb, the rush
to duck / cover
facedown /curled up

on classroom carpet,
like a fetal turtle
to wait for the shadows to pass,
for ash to rain down like chalkdust,
nauseous at the thought of separation--

mother / daughter
flesh / skeleton, that’s
what her brothers told her
it would be like being
engulfed by the sun –

families on her street
with their little concrete
beehives built in their
backyards, filled with their
tin-can / water barrel honeycombs

that’s where she’d run if the siren sounded,
where they’d all hide from the
fire falling, & the long ashy winter,
cursing a terrible creation,
the theft of that blasted fire –

ii )

this month white-coats slowly
slipped the hands of the doomsday
clock two dashes closer / it’s sitting
at five to midnight
but i’m not scared of that –

i’m more concerned
that up in iqaluit they’ve realized
they’ve not yet got a word for the bird
with a breast ruddy as seal blood,
they’ve never seen one before –

those robins gone north to warmth,
& orange trees perish in frosty california.
a woman in the maldives watches
her sands swiftly dissolving, thousands of lives
falling in the sudden swell of the sea –

& she isn't so worried about nuclear
fission / fusion, no, she thinks,
we’re already melting
our wings of thread & beeswax,
those far-off people with wheels & oil bring us

seconds & seconds closer to the sun –

get ink, shed tears.

I took these pictures of myself out on a walk a few nights ago. It was getting colder but I desperately needed to feel like I was breathing, I've been feeling a bit strange like that lately. I ended up swinging on the swings at the playground a few blocks south of my house for quite some time, gently gliding back & forth with quite a bit of glee. It was a very comforting motion, to swing in the dark, unnoticed by passing cars & raucous hockey players under the loud fluorescence of the rink nearby. Only a stray snowshoe hare watched me as it rummaged under the icy snowbanks. After swinging left me a little dizzy & much colder, I wandered by the elementary school, & took these pictures on the basketball court, having much fun playing with the one glimmering ambery light on the side of the building.

There's a Regina Spektor song, Après Moi (mp3 here), that contains a few lyrics from Boris Pasternak that I really love, that are somehow a summation of my feelings, & of February:

февраль достать чернил и плакать
писать о феврале навзрыд
пока грохочущая слякоть
весною чёрною горит

February. Get ink, shed tears.
Write of it, sob your heart out, sing,
While torrential slush that roars
Burns in the blackness of the spring.

And these words, in turn, reminds me so much of a book I just read, by Marusya Bociurkiw, a writer I am really, really enjoying right now. First through her poems (especially those about her baba) in Halfway to the East, and then through her novel, The Children of Mary... about three generations of Ukrainian-Canadian women, about how the past is inherited & resolved within a family, how the haunting of that river is inescapable. Really lovely & achy, especially in the imagery of water, the image of the rusalka... I highly, highly recommend it.

"Who was it that said, you can't cross the same river twice? The river I step in is not the river I stand in. Stuff rises up, you never know when. Sewage, overflow, effluent, the ebb and flow of time. We want to think we control things, we're only human that way. But what was it Baba used to say? Nature so-o-o-o stubborn, always have its way. And the rusalky, those haughty demanding sirens, lurking even in these buried rivers, pretending to call me home. Your sister, your mother...

Rusalka die only because people make her, my Baba once said in her gruff, cryptic way. People having to live better, then rusalka can rest.

The river is always there. The river is letting go."

-- p.205, Marusya Bociurkiw, The Children of Mary (Inanna Publications, 2006)

It will make you weep, but it's definitely worth it. Definitely definitely. & if you need some comfort & nourishment after the book, Bociurkiw also has a food blog with some very succulent-looking recipes on it. She also has a food memoir appearing soon, called Comfort Food for Break-ups, which intrigues me & entices me, based on the very small excerpt posted on the link above. Very sumptuous indeed. Meanwhile, I need to try her Jamaican soup...

little raptor!

This photo is of a little raptor-like dinosaur lurking in stencil-form on the outside of the Blood Services building on the southern end of campus. I first saw him from the bus one day & I later walked past on purpose, in hopes of catching a good photograph in his natural habitat amongst the (very Cretaceous-looking) pine-bushes. This city has some very whimsical stencil-artists.

This reminds me of how when I was 5, I really wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up. I spent a lot of time reading about dinosaurs & collecting stickers in this little book, learning all the Latin names. Sadly, I've now forgotten most of them... my geography obsession (which led to the linguistics-anthropology obsession by the time I was 12) really kicked in soon after & the dinosaur-names faded. However, I'm fairly confident that the specimen above is a Velociraptor... or perhaps a Deinonychus? The arms are a bit long, perhaps. Maybe it's a fantastical invented species.

I recall that when I was young, I liked the raptors a lot, but was most partial to the friendly plant-eating hadrosaurs with their duck-bills & head protrusions.... I also felt sorry for the Tyrannosaurus, because although powerful, he wasn't too bright... & had stubby little arms I thought were cute. But my favourite was the earliest of the birds, the Archaeopteryx, despite its similarity to a primitive sort of magpie.... (Did you know loons are the oldest of the 'modern' birds? Perhaps they're implicated in so many of the Earth-Diver creation myths across the northern hemisphere... ;) )

Dinosaurs being (linguistically) silly in DinosaurComics:

Spicing up their verbs!

Pondering the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis!

Undermining the very foundation of language!

Un dinosaure qui parle français!

waxwings = love.

{between the elms & the chokecherry}

{having a chokecherry feast}

{departing from the chokecherry}

{further away & filling the sky}

{all 4 pictures: waxwings in my neighbourhood, flying between the chokecherry tree in the back alley & the elms two blocks south, jan. 22/07}

I've waxed poetic about my love for waxwings many a time before (oh my, 'waxed' & 'waxwing', please forgive the pun) but I shall say it again: I adore these birds & witnessing them flocking & feeding makes me feel just like the universe is giving me a lovely gift. When they fly, they dart so intricately it looks like emphemeral embroidery patterns being stitched on cloud; the wings of a flock in unison like a sharp intake of breath when your heart swoops, skips a beat, & again with wave after wave of their soft calls like a wind sweeping through & dissolving into the sky.

I wish I could post a song called 'Waxwing' by Alasdair Roberts, but his new CD just came out today & hasn't reached me yet. In the song he sings of a waxwing who will 'bring thee amber the tide has gathered on the northern seashore' & since both amber & waxwings are among my most favourite things, I find it especially endearing. You can hear that snippet of this song (& others!) here.