A common man marvels at uncommon things. A wise man marvels at the commonplace. CONFUCIUS

Wednesday 28 April 2010

In The Garden




It's a pleasure
When, rising in the morning,
I go outside and
Find that a flower has bloomed
That was not there yesterday.


TACHIBANA AKEMI (1812-68)




6 comments:

Dominic Rivron said...

Even if it's a dandelion (?)

It reminds me that I read in The Guardian recently that Margaret Atwood described a poet as someone who was forever looking out of the window when others thought he should be mowing the lawn.

The Solitary Walker said...

To counter your Zen reply with a Zen reply, Dominic - especially if it's a dandelion (!)

I'm certainly looking out of the window at them as they spring up daily on our lawn. Though my wife is not calling me a poet for this.

Tramp said...

At home I insist on calling it grass not a lawn but it's true that it's more a patch of green. I'm all for a few flowers there and I've tried referring to it as a meadow but my wife won't accept that approach, I guess it's just too poetic.
One problem we do have is as the seasons turn and summer dries out the grass to a powdery brown. Then clover takes over which provides a green background but the flowers sit very close to the ground below the level I can cut it. The flowers attract bees and kids tend to run across it with bare feet.
I've been following your posts with interest but I've been a bit lethargic of late...Tramp

George said...

Nice photos, SW. We often talk about the poetry we find in books, what about the poetry found in the garden, where flowers bloom and nature provides good instruction for our own lives? Poetry is everywhere when we look and listen.

Tim Shey said...

Beautiful photographs.

Something new is in the air. Just hitchhiked from John Day, Oregon to Cedarville, California yesterday. Cold and blustery; there is snow on the Warner Mountains. But spring is here.

Spring

"NOTHING is so beautiful as spring --
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

"What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. -- Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning."

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Unknown said...

I like your photographs. And the Japanese poem too. Poems like haiku and tanka, in general, help us to reach the essence of things, to be nearer the smallest and most beautiful secrets of nature and, therefore, to find out ourselves.

As I see you're interested in Japanese poetry, maybe you'd like to come and visit this in my blog: nieblaeterna.blogspot.com/search/label/haiku
(although it's in Spanish...)

Raquel