Nature and Invention

Nature and Invention

Invention

Nature

People and Places

People and Places

Morning on the Lievre

                                                                  Far above us where a jay

                                                        Screams his matins to the day, 

                                                        Capped with gold and amethyst, 
                                                   Like a vapor from the forge 
                                                             Of a giant somewhere hid, 
                                                              Out of hearing of the clang 
                                                                           Of his hammer, skirts of mist                             Slowly up the woody gorge 
                              Lift and hang.
                                                        Softly as a cloud we go,
                                                                     Sky above and sky below,
                                                             Down the river; and the dip
                                                            Of the paddles scarcely breaks,
                                                                      With the little silvery drip
                        Of the water as it shakes
                         From the blades, the crystal deepOf the silence of the morn,
Of the forest yet asleep;                  
And the river reaches borne
      In a mirror, purple gray,
          Sheer away
To the misty line of light,
Where the forest and the stream
In the shadow meet and plight, 
Like a dream.

From amid a s t r e t c h of reeds, 

Where the lazy river sucks 

All the water as it bleeds 

             From a little curling creek, 

          And the muskrats peer and sneak 

       In around the sunken wrecks 

    Of a tree that swept the skies 

                    Long ago, 

         On a sudden seven ducks 

                                                               With a splashy rustle rise, 

                                                                   S t r e t c h i n g out their seven necks, 

                                                                  One before, and two behind, 

                                                                 And the others all arow, 

                                                          And as steady as the wind 

With a swivelling whistle go, 

Through the purple shadow led, 

Till we only hear their whir 

In behind a rocky spur, 

Just ahead. 

By 

Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)

Died Febuary 10, 1899 in Ottawa

War and Hope

What do I Remember of the Evacuation?

by Joy Kogawa

Sonnet 29

by William Shakespeare

          "Sonnet 29" by William Shakespeare highlights the peace found with death, and that will always be relevant, but with the Syrian refugee crisis and discrimination around the world, "What Do I Remember of the Evacuation" connects with life more today. "What Do I Remember of the Evacuation" tells the tale of a little Japanese girl whose family gets evacuated to camps during the war. Today, Syrian refugees are being sent to camps where the conditions are harsh and it seems like almost nobody wants to take them in. Also, around the world people are being discriminated against, like the girl in the poem who gets scorned just because she wrote her name in Japanese. At the end of the poem, the last message is that the little girl is praying to god that she might be white. Many people around the world are bleaching their skin and getting eye surgery because they want to be Caucasian. This is what western society sees as ideal. It is an injustice to humanity to discriminate against people, and it has such a negative effect as we can see from the little girls puzzlement after getting a negative reaction to writing in her native language. Some people may be connecting to "Sonnet 29" more because of discrimination, and for some people, the only escape would be death, and the peace that comes with it. 

Love and Loneliness

Love 

Loneliness

Love and Loneliness

(A poem with borrowed lines)
To say
we were in love is an understatement
To see
you laying so peacefully makes my heart ache
To realize
You left without a word of farewell*, leaves me broken inside
To taste
the tears running down my face is a reminder of how much I miss you
To know
I shall love thee better after death**, eases my soul
just a little

*- The Forsaken (II), Duncan Campbell Scott

**- Sonnet 43: How Do I Love Thee?, Elizabeth Barrett Browning