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Post by dvg on Sept 28, 2019 22:22:44 GMT
And now here’s my secret, a very simple secret;
it is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.-Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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Post by dvg on Oct 29, 2019 17:16:30 GMT
Here's one for you Corky, and your appropriate avatar pic: Trumpty Dumpty wanted a wall
To stir up a rabid political brawl.
His Republican rivals, both feckless and stodgy,
Succumbed in the end to his rank demagogy.
Dumpty’s wall made no earthly sense,
A boondoggle built at enormous expense.
But he promised, in speeches despotic and shrill,
He’d make certain that Mexico footed the bill.
Trumpty Dumpty kept insisting.
More and more citizens started resisting.
Sadly, there won’t be an end to this tale,
At least until reasonable people prevail.
-John Lithgow
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Post by dvg on Nov 5, 2019 19:05:14 GMT
Remember, remember! The fifth of November, The Gunpowder treason and plot; I know of no reason Why the Gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot! Guy Fawkes and his companions Did the scheme contrive, To blow the King and Parliament All up alive. Threescore barrels, laid below, To prove old England's overthrow. But, by God's providence, him they catch, With a dark lantern, lighting a match! A stick and a stake For King James's sake! If you won't give me one, I'll take two, The better for me, And the worse for you. A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope, A penn'orth of cheese to choke him, A pint of beer to wash it down, And a jolly good fire to burn him. Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring! Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King! Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!- author unknown
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Post by corky on Nov 6, 2019 19:03:05 GMT
There's a lane called Catesby lane down the road from where I live ,named after Robert Catesbys' ( gunpowder plot mastermind) father, he lived down there, just a bit of seasonal trivia for ya
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Post by dvg on Dec 4, 2019 18:48:20 GMT
One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
-Wallace Stevens dvg
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Post by dvg on Dec 5, 2019 20:30:49 GMT
The gift of free will is that in this life we can choose to be good or we can choose to be bad. We can choose what standards to hold ourselves to and what we will regard as important, honourable, and admirable. The choices we make in that regard determine whether we will experience peace or not.
Which is why each of us needs to sit down and examine ourselves. What do we stand for? What do we believe to be essential and important? What are we really living for? Deep in the marrow of our bones, in the chambers of our heart, we know the answer. The problem is that the business of life, the realities of pursuing a career and surviving in the world, come between us and that self-knowledge.
-Ryan Holiday
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Post by dvg on Dec 27, 2019 13:01:14 GMT
One can never be certain where their inspiration may be found. This next entry here, comes from the poem, "The Rhyme of the Remittance Man", penned in 1907 by Robert W. Service. For me, it appeared on the back of a can of an India Pale Ale, labeled "Ice Fog", as a gift received this Christmas. "Ice Fog" is brewed in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada, by Yukon Brewing. Cheers! There's a four-pronged buck a-swinging in the shadow of my cabin, And it roamed the velvet valley till to-day; But I tracked it by the river, and I trailed it in the cover, And I killed it on the mountain miles away. Now I've had my lazy supper, and the level sun is gleaming On the water where the silver salmon play; And I light my little corn-cob, and I linger, softly dreaming, In the twilight, of a land that's far away.
-Robert W. Service
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Post by dvg on Jan 13, 2020 18:31:43 GMT
Jackfish and walleye circle like clouds as he strains the silt floor of his pool, a lost lure in his lip, Five of Diamonds, River Runt, Lazy Ike, or a simple spoon, feeding a slow disease of rust through his body’s quiet armour. Kin to caviar, he’s an oily mudfish. Inedible. Indelible. Ancient grunt of sea in a warm prairie river, prehistory a third eye in his head. He rests, and time passes as water and sand through the long throat of him, in a hiss, as thoughts of food. We take our guilts to his valley and dump them in, give him quicksilver to corrode his fins, weed killer, gas oil mix, wrap him in poison arms. Our bottom feeder, sin-eater.
On an afternoon mean as a hook we hauled him up to his nightmare of us and laughed at his ugliness, soft sucker mouth opening, closing on air that must have felt like ground glass, left him to die with disdain for what we could not consume. And when he began to heave and thrash over yards of rock to the water’s edge and, unbelievably, in, we couldn’t hold him though we were teenaged and bigger than everything. Could not contain the old current he had for a mind, its pull, and his body a muscle called river, called spawn.
- Karen Solie
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Post by dvg on Mar 12, 2020 16:51:34 GMT
Gardens are also good places to sulk. You pass beds of spiky voodoo lilies and trip over the roots of a sweet gum tree, in search of medieval plants whose leaves, when they drop off turn into birds if they fall on land, and colored carp if they plop into water.
Suddenly the archetypal human desire for peace with every other species wells up in you. The lion and the lamb cuddling up. The snake and the snail, kissing. Even the prick of the thistle, queen of the weeds, revives your secret belief in perpetual spring, your faith that for every hurt there is a leaf to cure it.- Amy Gerstler
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Post by dvg on Apr 27, 2020 21:46:55 GMT
We dare not touch the sugar, And we must not touch the pie, We're afraid to eat the syrup, Can you guess the reason why? The bread must be inspected, And we overlook 'em then; It just seems we've got to eat 'em. Yes the ants are back again. They are crawlin' in the cellar, Everywhere on ev'ry shelf; They are trackin' through the butter, Every feller fer herself, In the fruit upon the table, In the stuff down on the floor; Yes the busy ants are movin', Never saw the like before. We have killed 'em by the thousands Yet a million more came on, Couldn't tell fer all our trouble That a single one was gone. Scalded, peppered, mashed and burned 'em, Yet they seem to have the call; And I guess we're bound to eat 'em, Bound to eat 'em after all.
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Post by dvg on Jun 16, 2020 19:43:42 GMT
The panther wind Leaps out of the night, The snake of lightning Is twisting and white, The lion of thunder Roars-and we Sit still and content Under a tree - We have met fate together And love and pain, Why should we fear The wrath of the rain!
- Sara Teasdale
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Post by dvg on Aug 25, 2020 6:35:34 GMT
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.-T.S. Elliot
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Post by dvg on Sept 20, 2020 1:11:03 GMT
The whiskey stink of rot has settled in the garden, and a burst of fruit flies rises when I touch the dying tomato plants.
Still, the claws of tiny yellow blossoms flail in the air as I pull the vines up by the roots and toss them in the compost.
It feels cruel. Something in me isn’t ready to let go of summer so easily. To destroy what I’ve carefully cultivated all these months. Those pale flowers might still have time to fruit.
My great-grandmother sang with the girls of her village as they pulled the flax. Songs so old and so tied to the season that the very sound seemed to turn the weather.
-Karina Borowicz
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Post by dvg on Oct 16, 2020 16:14:38 GMT
Bolt and bar the shutter, For the foul winds blow: Our minds are at their best this night, And I seem to know That everything outside us is Mad as the mist and snow.
- William Butler Yeats dvg
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Post by dvg on Oct 20, 2020 16:26:51 GMT
What’s madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. That place among the rocks—is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences! A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon, And in broad day the midnight come again! A man goes far to find out what he is— Death of the self in a long, tearless night, All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
- Theodore Roethke
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