This one -
"Above frost ices over morning
cold air thickly chills,
leaving a frozen white field
subdued in silence. On top
of houses, over chimney pots
settling flakes layer streets with snow.'
reminded me how the view out my window is poetry so overwhelming I can only try to copy with my camera, I can't even imagine how I could fashion words to match it.
8 comments:
Great picture, Steve. I may even try writing something to go with that beautiful snow. Are those red berries under the white?
I sent you an email regarding the flood of emails. You can change where you receive the emails or chose not to receive them. Up to you. :)
This is good. I never thought of writing a poem and then trying to photograph it - would be an interesing project for me to do when I am not too cold.
Thanks for this and it's nice to see a little bit of my poetry triggered something for you :)
I think you did a pretty good job capturing the scene in that photograph. I'm so glad I don't have to deal with your winter...it's bad enough to have to go through winter at all, let alone one where there's snow.
Oh that's Tiger's poem! I didn't even realize that. Wow...what a coincidence.
PB - yes, those are mountain ash berries still clinging to the tree. The bohemian waxwings spend the winter in Anchorage in large flocks, harvesting the berries around town.
Sam, so glad you and so many others feel that way or Anchorage would have become like every other American city. Our city areas are being malled by developers, but the real world isn't far away.
Alaska is the one place I have always loved from a distance.
When I was 18 or so I can remember telling a friend that I wish I could be dropped off by plane in the wilderness and have supplies flown in about once a month, that would be heaven to me. Of course now at this age I don't think being dropped in by plane would do but I still feel enchanted by the thought of complete and utter solitude and isolation in a landscape that is stunningly beautiful and treacherously dangerous.
Several years ago while wandering in the book store I purchased two books on Alaska. They have their place on the coffee table in my home and I still to this day thumb through them with wonder and joy. I have gone so far as to contact real estate brokers who still send me updates based on the criteria I sent.
Somewhere in my childish imagination I see myself selling out here and giving myself to the wilds of Alaska.
I can see myself making hole in a small log cabin, banging out words on an old fashion typewriter with the snow so deep I can see only a sliver of light coming through the small window. I can hear the drone of the small aircraft bringing my provisions and the barking Malamutes that anxiously wait to be harnessed so they can take me to the small outpost three days journey, where I will drop my latest transcript.
And then just when I've made my millions I'm standing in the door way watching the aurora borealis, I glimpse movement coming in my direction. As I stand spellbound I see a man astride a white stallion galloping closer and closer and closer and then to my utter amazement he jumps from his stead and takes me in his arms and says, " It's time to home now Eve."
Eve, You might check out "Ordinary Wolves" by Seth Kantner. It is a beautifully written book about growing up in a small house far out in the wilderness. His dad had this vision of living in harmony with nature, his mom had enough after a while and split. It is both spectacularly enchanting and disturbing. While the book is fiction, the author did grow up that way. If you're really serious, I have a couple of friends with cabins out in the wilderness (of course Seth Kanter would laugh at these as wilderenss, but even for us city Alaskans, it is wilderness). I could ask if they'd be willing to let someone spend a month or two.
You bet I'm serious. Oh and here's the 'go' to go with that last line. ("Bad go, now stay!)giggle.
I will look for the book today. I was trying to remember the name of the man who they did a documentary on not long ago who lived in a small cabin in alaska and made everything in it by hand. He may have made the cabin too. I missed the program but a friend of mind told me a little bit about it, of course I've slept since then...For some 30 or 40 years he lived there. As I recall he had started there as just someone staying for a short while but ended up having the land management giving him the land because of the improvements he had made. I believe he passed it back to management at his death.
Wow a month in Alaska...let me dream about that a while.
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