Taken with the Sony DSC-W55 Digital Camera that I bought for my daughter's birthday recently. Quite different to the cell phone camera's shot. The words of the little poem there I don't think have the quality of being born out of this image...

The bug that's going around caught me, sore throat, coughing a bit, etc., first cold in 3 years, time for sure, so posting a little pic of ma doggie taken on Saturday morning...while I was talking to ma son on the telephone while ma daughter was out getting us something to eat. That was before the blizzard. And before I came out from my shadow, though that's another story. I'm not a good sick person - I don't like getting sick! Grumble grumble. Back ta bed wit' ya! Rest the best medicine. xo

It's heavily snowing, you'd be ice-encrusted in minutes, and blowing, and as the ground rose whitely through the day even thunder and lightning struck from the billowy sky. Not a day to be out, and I went grocery shopping with my little red basket and bought far too much and purchased a luggage rack and was tormented by heaps of snow which dragged my little basket this way and that waiting for buses and walking the short route home after the subway ride; the snow, a light and beautiful cascade from above, became impassable white heaps of resistant solidity on the ground. If you fall into snow, it closes around you fast and becomes like cement, I remember that from an article on avalanches.

A blizzard. Predicted to be the coldest Winter ever having begun. Snow crews out in force tonight.

How many angels on the way home stopped to help me? Such gallantry, men and women. 'Do you need help?' 'Yes... thank you.' Me, who is stubbornly independent had to admit I couldn't carry my load. Why'd I buy more than I could carry? Why didn't I know the snow would render my wheels useless? How could we not chuckle, the helping angels and I. And how many blessings did I give?

Someone set out to film cold, uncaring Torontonians, and found us rather the opposite. We generally go out of our way to help each other.

Toronto friendliness is something I missed when I moved away. It was so good to come home to. With my badly constructed, over-full, precariously swinging basket and its ridiculously attached wheels, oh even the blizzarding snow must have laughed at me, I received much appreciated warmth from the people of this city today.

_______________
Click for larger size. There is so little time for the hours a photopoem takes that surely it's not quite, but then maybe. On the other hand, the next day now, I see the colours are not so good - it was taken with the camera on my phone & maybe should re-do with a better camera. The little poem is also part of a larger stream of thoughts that I recorded during meditation and which drifted into the strangeness of time. The clustering of molecules and why motion and life/birth/death occurs. Oh, and then how our solar system's magnetic field is warped, asymmetrical, which was in the news. And then I thought, maybe time is issued forth from the great burning fields of the sun itself. And I saw photos of sun spots that were so large the entire earth could fall into them. And how close-up images of the sun resemble Van Gogh's last painting, of the wheat fields. That's how the sun's surface looks - like Van Gogh's burning fields of light. And in the movie, Sunshine, how the crew die rapturous deaths in the sun. And how I've always been a worshipper of the light, mystical and real. And it's all intriguing and thus very exciting to me. But to weave it all into a prose poem! Oh, la!

Perhaps words later...

Wow! After much research that was, naturally, inconclusive, when I saw the HTC Touch, I succumbed. Almost instantly, but when you're ready, you're ready. I used a Pocket PC for years, so this seemed natural, and I found a good plan, 200 min a month, unlimited local calls after 6pm, unlimited browser, no system access fee, the price of the phone affordable, a 3-year agreement. Oh, so what if the Canadian cell phone market has been de-regulated and prices should drop in 2008, I needed it now. It's time for a new computer and I really would like the new iMac rather than a MacBook and this phone seems an ideal mobile device - tiny, discreet, but with amazing capabilities. So I've been having fun all weekend, between putting up our tree and watching movies on IFC, exploring this little contraption. On which I'm posting now in a coffee shop listening to jazz. Too bad I can't get up and boogie!

Because this poem is under consideration for publication, I have encrypted it so as to keep the comments intact and as something easy for me to find in the great archiver Blogger is.

blue lines, watchers, boxes

.......................martial arts
a whole room jumping, jabbing
kicking, cutting air

falling gold bands

then the red

......vision, blood, shirts on the backs of

floating discs, cut, fresh green

.....eyes that see
...................everything

horizontal lines raised

red banners, orange tigers

blue bricks, pink band, luminous
candles, prison

control your destiny


labyrinth, blue-black hair
smoke, the floor disappears

a dragon of virtue

immensity of primordial waters

jump from stone to stone


on the ying-yang, muscles flying

bells

opening of the passage
incense, the moon


the hooded men
striped tigers, white satin

red dragon
blue god

entryway to the past
.......................opens

......create the future




Vishnu Visvarupa, Preserver of the Universe, Represented as the Whole World | Unknown
19th century | watercolor on paper | 15 1/4x 11 in/38.7 x 28cm |Victoria & Albert Museum, London UK

Snow drifts from the sky whitely combing
the red and golden yellow leaves;
when it melts,
bare limbs climb into the sky.
I want to lie on those whorls of wood,
like mastheads of stately Nordic goddesses
or my tender frozen ancestral grandmothers,
dreaming of Daphne, firey gowns
stripped by solar winds to stark
nude greys of Winter.
Thick ridges of weather
carved rivulets
in the bark.

_____
Visit Riverside Rambles for the 18th edition of the Festival of the Trees, where this little poem is included among many great entries.