Oh! the Summer Night
Has a smile of light,
And she sits on a sapphire throne.
~ Barry Cornwall
(The Nights)
~ summer solstice ~
a smile of light
Tag: evening
owl prowl
photo by Timothy Rodgers
The pale stars were sliding into their places. The whispering of the leaves was almost hushed. All about them it was still and shadowy and sweet. It was that wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater — a moment when anything can happen, anything be believed in.
~ Olivia Howard Dunbar
(The Shell of Sense)
photo by Mark Musselman
South Carolina
Last night, we took a magical evening walk in the woods, an owl prowl, offered by the Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center. And something wonderful did happen! We saw and heard a family of barred owls, a mother and three fledglings!
Before the walk we listened to a lecture about the owls found in Connecticut, some common, like the barred owl, others rare, like the snowy owl. We met a little rescued screech owl who was blind in one eye. And there was a lab where we got to crack open a sterilized owl pellet and find the bones and teeth of swallowed rodents. A very informative and enchanting evening!
laconic noons and sterner sundowns
It is also November. The noons are more laconic and the sundowns sterner, and Gibraltar lights make the village foreign. November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.
~ Emily Dickinson
(Letter to Elizabeth Chapin Holland, November 1865)
Autumn wins you best by this its mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay!
~ Robert Browning
(Paracelsus)
indolent-ripe on the tree
Gales Ferry, Connecticut
Not from successful love alone,
Nor wealth, nor honor’d middle age, nor victories of politics or war;
But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,
As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,
As softness, fullness, rest, suffuse the frame, like fresher, balmier air,
As the days take on a mellower light,
and the apple at last hangs really finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree,
Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!
The brooding and blissful halcyon days!
~ Walt Whitman
(Sands at Seventy)
endless strife
All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife. What do creeds matter, what possible difference does it make to anyone today whether the doctrine of the resurrection is correct or incorrect, or the miracles, they don’t happen nowadays, but very queer things do that concern us much more. Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.
~ Beatrix Potter
(A Life in Nature)
meteorological mast
It’s been a while since we went down to Avery Point so we decided to take a sunset stroll last night. Believe it or not, our bathroom renovation still is not finished. It started on February 29 and was supposed to be done on April 1. A series of tile and fixture delivery delays stalled the job at various points. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the new bathroom door will be put in place this afternoon as promised…
After taking showers at my sister’s apartment for five weeks at least we could finally use the shower here, but we still had no toilet and had to continue using the one in the basement. We’ve only had the new toilet for two days now… One thing I’m thrilled about is my new linen closet in the bathroom!!! No more running out in the hall dripping wet when we forget to get a towel!
We discovered something new installed along the Avery Point sculpture walkway, a meteorological mast.
We’ve never had a renovation done before – this has been a surreal experience. At last, though, I think I may have a touch of spring fever!
something more
All her life she had believed in something more, in the mystery that shape-shifted at the edge of her senses. It was the flutter of moth wings on glass and the promise of river nymphs in the dappled creek beds. It was the smell of oak trees on the summer evening she fell in love, and the way dawn threw itself across the cow pond and turned the water to light.
~ Eowyn Ivey
(The Snow Child)
clipped by the elbows
Is that a cormorant perched on the next stump-island? He snaps open his wings and leaves them outstretched, as if they were hung on the line, clipped by the elbows to dry in the dusk. When we get closer, he will pull in the laundry and lift his feet restlessly – one, then the other.
~ Kathleen Dean Moore
(Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature)
one hundred years
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(Poems & Other Writings)