More llamas

Sheep and leaves

Llama against an autumn sky

Morning Cloud and Fall Color 10-22-04

Who says that poets love the mountains?
Mountains, mountains---
            I'm tired of writing about them!
Thousands of peaks and thousands of ranges
            seem to throw themselves at me.
I have to rest three hours for each hour of climbing.

When your desk is piled high
            Where can you put another book?
When your stomach is full,
            How can you go on eating?
I have no use for more green slopes
            and mountain mists---
I'll wrap them in a package
            and send them to my city friends.


YANG WAN-LI "AT AN-LE TEMPLE"
(Trans. Jonathan Chaves)

Morning 9-23-04

Alma

Skyline Drive Sunrise 9-14-04

ram: n. a male sheep
v. to strike with violence

With dusk changing rapidly to darkness, we were down at the barn trying to herd sheep by the single light shining out into the middle pen. A gate sprung open, our eight rams had mixed in with a dozen or so ewes in the barn lot. This is not good for your breeding records, so the younger son and I were thrashing around in a waist high mob of wooly backs in a half-lit barnyard. Like some sweat-soaked, near-sighted, anti-Noah, there I was frantically trying to divide male from female so they would not go together, two by two. The sheep were being sheep, that is to say, that they were not cooperating. I was not happy and said so. At length. Using a full and varied vocabulary gained from sixteen years working with cops and criminals. We finally got the impromptu ovine singles mixer to move into a smaller pen where there was more hope of catching the rams and giving them the bum's rush back out into the upper pasture without their new girlfriends in tow. I had my back turned trying to close the gate when February, until then a favorite ram, slammed me squarely in the back. With Newtonian inevitability, I in turn slammed into the gate, throwing it back open. The younger son, faced with the sight of his father hopping around like Quasimodo and hollering like Homer Simpson showed maturity beyond his years by neither fleeing nor dissolving in laughter.

Later, when the aspirin kicked in and I stopped wondering how much freezer space the offender would take up as mutton chops, my wife assured me that it had just been a love tap. If he had been really serious, he would have hit me much harder.

It has been a while since I updated this site. If you are reading this, thank you for still being interested and stopping by. I will endeavor to be more regular in my postings over the next month. In the meantime, here is a poem from Wallace Stevens that captures many of my evenings of late:

THE HOUSE WAS QUIET AND THE WORLD WAS CALM

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

This, believe it or not, is the site approved by the outgoing town council for the location of our new Wal-Mart. The Shenandoah River flows behind the trees at the edge of the field. I once described the folks in my neck of the woods as "conservatives with something left to conserve." Less and less it seems.

Sunset over Skyline Drive July 7, 2004

Sunset on Buck Mountain July 4, 2004

James H. Bell: June 5, 1932 - June 6, 2004

After the rain; sunset, moonrise

Today the feast of Pentecost is celebrated in both the Eastern and Western Churches. The intricate cycles of the Gregorian and Julian calendars for calculating the date of Easter rotated into agreement this year so Rome, the Protestant denominations and Orthodoxy have shared a rare season of liturgical unity. We Orthodox observe the feast by kneeling at prayer in Vespers, both rejoicing in prayer at the gift of the Spirit, and returning again to the spirit of repentance that, if never completely forgotten, has been overshadowed these past weeks by the joy of the Paschal celebration.

David Melling has an instructive meditation on the prayers of Pentecost at his website. The full services are available online in a translation by Father Eprhraim at his site here.

God, great and eternal, holy and lover of humankind, who have counted us worthy to stand at this hour before your unapproachable glory to hymn and praise your wonders, be gracious to us, your unworthy servants. Grant us grace to offer you without conceit and with a broken heart the thrice-holy hymn of glory and thanksgiving for your great gifts . . . Remember, Lord, our weakness and do not destroy us with our iniquities, but in our humiliation show us your great mercy, so that fleeing the darkness of sin we may walk in the daylight of justice; and having put on the weapons of light we may persevere unassailed by any assault of the evil one, and that with boldness we may glorify you for all things, the only true God and lover of humankind. For indeed, Master and Maker of all things, truly great is your mystery: the temporary dissolution of your creatures and after this their restoration and repose to the ages. We give thanks to you for all things, for our entrances into this world and for our departures, which through your unfailing promise betoken for us beforehand our hopes of resurrection and unending life. Would that we may enjoy it at your future second Coming, for you are the author of our resurrection and the impartial judge who loves humankind of what we have done in life, the Master and Lord of our reward.

The preceeding is particularly appropriate as we in the United States remember those killed in conflict on behalf of their fellow citizens this Memorial Day weekend. We give thanks to you for all things, for our entrances into this world and for our departures. Memory Eternal.

Sheep for the shearing

Friday Morning, the view towards Hogback

Friday Morning, Buck Mountain

Thursday Afternoon