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At Great Pond
the sun, rising,
scrapes his orange breast
on the thick pines,
and down tumble
a few orange feathers into
the dark water.
On the far shore
a white bird is standing
like a white candle —
or a man, in the distance,
in the clasp of some meditation —
while all around me the lilies
are breaking open again
from the black cave
of the night.
Later, I will consider
what I have seen —
what it could signify —
what words of adoration I might
make of it, and to do this
I will go indoors to my desk —
I will sit in my chair —
I will look back
into the lost morning
in which I am moving, now,
like a swimmer,
so smoothly,
so peacefully,
I am almost the lily —
almost the bird vanishing over the water
on its sleeves of night.

Mary Oliver

Margo Lane came to work for Lamont Cranston after he saved her eccentric scientist father from death . Margo is Lamont’s friend and closest confient. She has been trained in the arts of disguise, self defense, and general espionage techniques.
Resemblance to Diane a coincidence? I think not.

Diane’s collaborative Lighting party photos .

For my mother on her eighty-eigtht birhday.

Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.

Ted Kooser

I’ve decided I want someone else to live my life.

Collaborative Lighting celebrates their first year in business. Photo of random party people.
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Chris et famille have finally returned from their endless vacation, and with them, this soon-to-be distant memory captured by Caroline.
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Borrowed from a recent New Yorker
For An Old Girlfriend, Long Dead

Lying on that blanket, nights on the seventh green–
in the dry air the faint scent of gasoline,

nothing above us but the ragged moon,
nothing between but a whispered soon …

Well, such was romance in the seventies.
Watergate and Cambodia, the public lies,

made our love seem, somehow, more true.
Of the few things I wanted then , I needed you.

I remember our last arguments, my angry calls,
then the long silence, those northern falls

we drifted toward our newly manufactured lives.
Does anything else of us survive?

That day in Paris, perhaps, when you swore
our crummy hotel was all you were looking for–

each cobbled Paris street, each dry baguette,
even the worthless sous nothing you’d forget.

Outside, a block away, the endless Seine
flowed roughly, then brightly, then…

Then nothing, Nothing later went quite that far.
I remember that spring. Those breasts. That car.

William Logan

This Wednesday, my godson, Charlie , will meet his friend Laura in Caratunk, Maine, and will walk with her for eight days on the Appalachian Trail. His destination is Jo-Mary campground, which is not too far from one of our fly-in trips – Lower Jo-Mary Lake. Laura, who began in West Virginia, will continue on, eventually meeting up with her dad to summit Mt. Katadhin.

I’ve been enthralled by Laura’s journey (entries added whenever The Trail intersected with an internet-capable computer) and I’m excited about Charlie’s participation. However, it looks like there will be no real time participation as he’ll pass through only one town ( Monson) and to the best of my searching ability, it lacks a cyber cafe or even a library with a working phone number. Oh well. It looks like I’ll see photos of his Scotland trip and the formerly friendly family of big black bears before he skips off to college.


Legible size map.

Speaking of Charlie, last night I watched “Goodbye, Mr Chips,” the 1969 version with Peter O’Toole and Petula Clark. Coulda been filmed at Deerfield.