Hanover Bald Eagle Live Cams (Via Your Eyes Your Blaze Out)
It’s been a long winter…
February 23, 2021 by 30 Comments
Sunday Morning
February 14, 2021 by 20 Comments
we touch each other.
how?
with wings that beat…
— Rainer Maria Rilke, in an inscription to Marina Tsvetaeva, from Letters Summer 1926: Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Rilke
Photo: DK. Gull. 6:56 am, February 14, 2021. 28° F, feels like 20° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
Happy New Year!
January 1, 2021 by 45 Comments
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter…
I feel my boots trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart pumping hard…
I want to be light and frolicsome…
and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.
— Mary Oliver, “Starlings in Winter” in “Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays”
Notes:
- Photo: DK, Birds @ Daybreak. Jan 1, 2021. 6:45 to 7am. 30° F, feels like 23° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT. More amazing scenes from this morning here and here.
- Mary Oliver’s poem “Starlings in Winter” was edited. Full poem here @Mindfulbalance. Thank you Karl for sharing for the Mary Oliver poem and the inspiration.
Miracle. All of It.
September 8, 2020 by 32 Comments
My eyes graze his binoculars and without a word he passes them over. And like that the birds are no longer smudges, but elegantly detailed and purposeful and real. They steal my breath as they always do, these creatures who think nothing of having wings.
— Charlotte McConaghy, Migrations: A Novel (Flatiron Books, August 4, 2020)
Notes:
- Photo: Cormorant. Spirit Bird. Sept 7, 2020. 6:48 am. The Cove. Stamford, FT
- Back Story: Walking. In Search of my Spirit Bird.
- Post title Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
this is how I would…
September 27, 2019 by 20 Comments
The startled blue heron erupts out of its long-legged
inwardness and flies low to the pond over its
shadow. My eye flickers between its great sweep
of wing and its blurred mirror motion almost white
in the pond’s sky-shine. At the end of each wingbeat,
the long body dips toward its rising shadow. Now
the heron settles back down onto itself as far away
from me as the pond allows and I finish my walk half gangly,
half graceful thinking if I were a bird, this is how I’d fly.
~ Nils Peterson, “Blue Heron” from All the Marvelous Stuff (2019)
Notes: Poem via 3quarks Daily. Blue Heron photo: Pennington
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call. Up!
September 9, 2019 by 34 Comments
lift of water,
bracing
smooth—
a lubricant
to be part of
this synchrony,
able to lean
on others, ride
the breastbone
of a bird,
without wings or
even a feather.
~ Diane DeCillis, from “To Lean”
Notes: Poem – Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels). Photo: via Mennyfox55.
Saturday Morning. And then, little by little…
August 10, 2019 by 16 Comments
You must learn to stop being yourself. That’s where it begins, and everything else follows from that. You must let yourself evaporate. Let your muscles go limp, breathe until you feel your soul pouring out of you, and then shut your eyes. That’s how it’s done. The emptiness inside your body grows lighter than the air around you. Little by little, you begin to weigh less than nothing. You shut your eyes; you spread your arms; you let yourself evaporate. And then, little by little, you lift yourself off the ground.
Like so.
Notes: Quote – Thank you Whiskey River. Photo: Jacqueline Green, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Photo by Richard Calms. (via Mennyfox55)
T.G.I.F.: It’s been a long week
July 19, 2019 by 12 Comments
There is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know. Who can say what it is that’s going on? But I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: “You’ve turned up in the right place at the right time. You’re doing fine. Don’t ever think that you’ve been forgotten.”
– Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC
Notes:
- Inspired by another quote from Whiskey River: “Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- Painting “Swallow” (2011) by Nicky Loutit (via Your Eyes Blaze Out).
- Quote via Whiskey River
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
March 18, 2019 by 38 Comments
I wake from a dream,
reach towards day as it hatches,
its tiny beak presses against
the delicate shell of sky.
Today I might learn to fly.
~ Christine Valters Paintner, “Wings” in Dreaming of Stones: Poems
Notes:
- See that Heartbeat! Photo / GIF: European Robin by Head Like An Orange
- Poem: Thank you Make Believe Boutique
