Photo: Gerst June 2021 Digital Image
Mervyn O’Gorman, Summer 1913. Autochrome Color Photo of his daughter Christina O’Gorman, Lulworth Cove, Dorset, England,
It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.
Edgar Allen Poe
Photo: Gerst
The foxglove bells, with lolling tongue,
Will not reveal what peals were rung
In Faery, in Faery,
A thousand ages gone.
All the golden clappers hang
As if but now the changes rang;
Only from the mottled throat
Never any echoes float.
Mary Webb, The Foxglove Bells
Photo: Gerst
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
William Blake, Proverbs of Hell
The rabbit was eating peaches fallen from the tree. She looked up at me as if to say, “Who are you to visit me as the sun is setting and the night begins to fall?”
I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,
My grief was not excessive.
For to come upon warblers in early May
Was to forget time and death:
Theodore Roethke, “The Far Field”
Photo: Gerst
Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York,1957
Once, in summer
in the blueberries,
I fell asleep, and woke
when a deer stumbled against me.I guess
she was so busy with her own happiness
she had grown careless
and was just wandering along
listening
to the wind as she leaned down
to lip up the sweetness.
So, there we were
with nothing between us
but a few leaves, and wind’s
glossy voice
shouting instructions…
Mary Oiver
Photo: Gerst
The street outside our house repaved. Clear bright day.
Oh, honey of an hour,
I never knew thy power,
Prohibit me
Till my minutest dower,
My unfrequented flower,
Deserving be.
Emily Dickinson, Poem 1734
Photo: Gerst.
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts…
There’s fennel for you, and columbines; there’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they wither’d all when my father died. They say he made a good end,— [Sings.]
“For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.” (Shakespeare, Hamlet)
Camille Saint-Saëns, “Carnival of Animals, Aquarium”
Writes Jason Higgins (for Professor Norrie Epstein’s Dogs and the Humans):
