# Song of the Open Road



## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

Walt Whitman : http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/126


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## mm03gn (Sep 24, 2008)

That was very beautiful! I sure can appreciate the value of enjoying the outdoors. As I type, I am lying on a hammock in my front yard - tethered between two 200ft+ maple trees. My favourite place to relax... Thank you so much for sharing!


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## Bailey & Bentley (Feb 25, 2007)

Beautiful!!


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## moverking (Feb 26, 2007)

More, more...


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## Jo Ellen (Feb 25, 2007)

Beautiful. I know I am never so content as when I follow Daisy's lead in the great wide open


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## Thor0918 (Feb 28, 2008)

Wow, I love that!


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

What a great post Jill, Whitman poetry and dogs mingled like that. Two of my favorite things, really.

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.


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## Bogey's Mom (Dec 23, 2008)

I am a big fan of his Song of Myself. Walt Whitman was one of the best parts of my high school English experience.


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## beargroomer (Jan 2, 2008)

Beautiful!


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## davebeech (Feb 11, 2006)

love those pics and the setting


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## Finn's Fan (Dec 22, 2007)

Ah, to have you as my high school English teacher, although I did have a couple of inspired ones Lovely, Jill, simply lovely.


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## BeauShel (May 20, 2007)

Beautiful just beautiful.


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## Pudden (Dec 28, 2008)

lovely, and great pics with it.

I think ol Walt might have been a field biologist


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

Brian, when I first saw that photo of Gus, with its ethereallight, I knew. It was a big moment, before you shared his diagnosis, and maybe even before his official labs were back. It wrings my heart still and always- beautiful Gus looks otherworldy there.


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## EvilNessCroft (Feb 17, 2009)

I love it! Beautiful!


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

Ljilly28 said:


> Brian, when I first saw that photo of Gus, with its ethereallight, I knew. It was a big moment, before you shared his diagnosis, and maybe even before his official labs were back. It wrings my heart still and always- beautiful Gus looks otherworldy there.


Yeah, I had no idea when I took that picture that Gus wasn't long for this world. It's labeled "beam me up, god" in the photobucket album. Art imitating life imitating art, I suppose.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

Hey, as long as I'm in this thread, I should mention that since I read your post, Whitman lines keep on flying out of my memory and getting stuck on my woods time with the dogs. Yesterday it was "uttering joyous leaves" while the dogs were romping in a field with Andy.

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches; 
Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous leaves of dark green, 
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself; 
But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves, standing alone there, without its friend, its lover near—for I knew I could not; 
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss, 
And brought it away—and I have placed it in sight in my room; 
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends, 
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them); 
Yet it remains to me a curious token—it makes me think of manly love; 
—For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana, solitary, in a wide flat space, 
Uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a lover, near, 
I know very well I could not.


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## Doodle (Apr 6, 2009)

The poetry and the pictures are truly lovely! They really made me pause and gave me a taste of serenity in my usual hectic day. Thank you both Jill and Brian for that. I wish I had you guys as my English teachers. Or maybe I just needed to be more mature (notice I didn't say older here, LOL) to appreciate it!


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

Ajax is one happy- looking pup. He has such a glow. The picture is perfect with the lines.


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

One thing I love about Walt Whitamn is his constant assurance that death does not mean being gone. I feel that way about my goldens. In some way, my goldens are individuals, but in other ways, I see Raleigh in Finn, Gus and Joplin in Finn too and definitely Joplin in Tally. In "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry", Walt just says it straight out- I am with you. He figures that people, dead or alive, of the same or different generations, are intimately alike in their inner thoughts and dreams, and he has a blast imagining himself long-dead but yet still chatting with passengers on the Brooklyn Ferry through his poem. Who knows, he says, maybe I'm "dead" but maybe I'm looking right at you, smiling that you are now so much like I was then. . . And that is how it is with Goldens. When I work with Tally, I feel Joplin there too.

What is it then between us? 
What is the count of the hundreds of years between us? 

I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine, 
I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the 
waters around it, 
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me, 
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me, 
In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me. . . 

It is sad though, to think of how he cheerfully swam in the water near NYC and thought of Brooklyn as the leafy green beauty spot of yesteryear. It's not quite as clean as in Walt Whitman's day!


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## Abbydabbydo (Jan 31, 2007)

Truly inspiring, you two! I loved it!


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## paula bedard (Feb 5, 2008)

Just lovely...I'm sitting here looking out the window at the sun weaving it's way through the tree tops and lighting the forest floor. Perfect timing. Thanks!


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## 3459 (Dec 27, 2007)

Jill, thank you for this lovely thread. I keep coming back to the thread to enjoy the introspection and serenity evoked with Whitman's words and your photography and comments. Thanks to Brian, too, for his wonderful contributions. Anytime the two of you want to share your amazing literary and artistic gifts and beautiful goldens and continue class here, I want to be in attendance.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

Ljilly28 said:


> One thing I love about Walt Whitamn is his constant assurance that death does not mean being gone. I feel that way about my goldens. In some way, my goldens are individuals, but in other ways, I see Raleigh in Finn, Gus and Joplin in Finn too and definitely Joplin in Tally. In "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry", Walt just says it straight out- I am with you. He figures that people, dead or alive, of the same or different generations, are intimately alike in their inner thoughts and dreams, and he has a blast imagining himself long-dead but yet still chatting with passengers on the Brooklyn Ferry through his poem. Who knows, he says, maybe I'm "dead" but maybe I'm looking right at you, smiling that you are now so much like I was then. . . And that is how it is with Goldens. When I work with Tally, I feel Joplin there too.


I've never really thought of it that way, and you're so beautifully right. He's not religious in his poetry, but at the same time he understands how love transcends the physical, and he sees it in moss and leaves and love as well.

I've always chafed at the idea of a "rainbow bridge" in any kind of literal sense when I think of beloved dogs who have died, but the idea that they echo on through us is peaceful and beautiful.


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## moverking (Feb 26, 2007)

Please, you two...Brian and Jill, don't let this thread fade completely away. Add to it from time to time...I just love it and look for it in my office trapped windowless day. Then ponder more when I'm free and in my wonderful yard in the evenings. Thank you both


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## Debles (Sep 6, 2007)

It is spirituality which is inside each of us, animal and human.

That was beautiful Jill. Your photos of your goldens fit so well.

I notice. Whitman doesn't mention ticks does he? : )


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every 
moment of your life. 
Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore, 
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, 
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, 
and laughingly dash with your hair.
















O dazzling and tremendous, how quick the sun-rise would surely kill me,
if I could not now and always send the sun-rise out of me
















This the touch of my lips to yours. . .
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has.
Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering
through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

And you, O my Soul, where you stand, 
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space, 
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them; 
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold; 
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.


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## Doodle (Apr 6, 2009)

Jill and Brian, you two are amazing with this...all I can do is sit back and enjoy.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

*"To Think of Time"*










I was walking with Ajax in the woods, bushwhacking really, on the South Branch of the Middlebury River, high in the Green Mountains, and amidst the birds, butterflies, meadows, the clear flowing water, and my good friend Jax, I thought of time, flowing downstream:

Pleasantly and well-suited I walk,
Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good,
The whole universe indicates that it is good,
The past and the present indicate that it is good.
How beautiful and perfect are the animals!
How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it!
What is called good is perfect, and what is called bad is just as perfect,
The vegetables and minerals are all perfect, and the imponderable
fluids perfect;
Slowly and surely they have pass'd on to this, and slowly and surely
they yet pass on.

And my buddy, in a sea of leaves of grass and time.










I pondered a little further in a blog entry on it here.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place; 
The suns I see, and the suns I cannot see, are in their place;
The palpable is in its place, and the impalpable is in its place.)


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

The butterflies, besides making me give a nod to old Nabokov, brought a tiny piece of a Goethe poem I used to love into mind

Distance cannot make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.
So long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on this dark earth. . .










Tango butterfly


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

Oh wow, it took me a minute to see the butterfly in the shape of Tango and her reflection. What a great shot!


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## moverking (Feb 26, 2007)

tippykayak said:


> Oh wow, it took me a minute to see the butterfly in the shape of Tango and her reflection. What a great shot!


Me, too, but isn't it great?


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## Pudden (Dec 28, 2008)

SNOWY NIGHT
_—John Haines_

This is like a place
we used to know,
but stranger
and filled with the cold
imagination of a frozen
sea, in which
the moon is anchored
like a ghost
in heavy chains.


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## Pudden (Dec 28, 2008)

SOUTH WIND
_—John Haines_

I dreamed of horses in the night,
invaders with strong, sweating
bodies plunging through the cold.

The stars were suddenly hidden,
but dark manes flowed
with sparks, and on the black,
frozen hills the rushing air
soared like a forest on fire.

The thunder of their passage
broke down the walls of my dream.
I awoke in the ruined kingdom
of frost with a warm wind
blowing my hair, and heard about me
and in the distance
the heavy hoofs still pounding
as the wild, invisible army
overran the north.


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## Pudden (Dec 28, 2008)

moverking said:


> Me, too, but isn't it great?


yeah - great shot, very lyrical. Cool thread, folks


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

Hooray for Pudden's contributions to this thread! Very cool stuff and beautifully dark in places.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.












You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.












Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.












Shot at Abbey Pond, a high mountain lake in the Green Mountain National Forest. Pictures 1 and 2 were taken by my mom; the third is mine.


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## moverking (Feb 26, 2007)

Ahhh, Tippy, I think you just posted what I want to be my epitaph. I love that...and Jax, mixing his energy deep into the muddy Earth - already leaving bits of himself in the world...


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## meadowmist (May 27, 2009)

LOVE how you put the poetry and pictures together.......I love Whitman also!


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

Brian, those are some of my favorite Whitman lines to teach. I always walk into class and instead of taking my usual seat, I ask the AP juniors: Where's Walt Whitman right now? If you need to have a heart-to-heart talk with him this very second, where is he? Then, someone will start citing a page numberfrom the previous night's reading to say he's in the grass. But I cut them off and say hell, no - TAKE us there and throw open the classroom door. . . Since I never let them go outside, it's always awesome. We lay in the leaves of grass and have class Whitman's way- under the sky not the ceilings of classrooms or churches, lol. And we talk about how yes he's in the grass but he's also in the poem- how individual letters make up a meaningful sentences like one blade of grass makes up a field and how books have leaves. . . 

Jax's muddy face is the best, and Gus is in Jax and Finn is too and Gus is in Finn and Rip and Rodin and Comet too and Borax.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

moverking said:


> Ahhh, Tippy, I think you just posted what I want to be my epitaph. I love that...and Jax, mixing his energy deep into the muddy Earth - already leaving bits of himself in the world...


Yeah, at first I felt weird mixing the dirt on his face with the dirt that Whitman thinks of returning to, putting together my young puppy and the thought of death, but I realized that life and death in "Song of Myself" aren't seen in opposition at all, but rather as a false distinction. Dying and returning to the earth isn't so different after all from digging a hole in the mud on the side of a wild lake.

And "Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged / Missing me one place search another, / I stop somewhere waiting for you" was just so beautiful; the dog up ahead on the trail and the dog whose life is shorter than yours are (I hope) not so different after all.


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

Pudden, Thanks for the amazing pictures so evocative of true north. I first read John Haines in a class about 20th century wilderness writers, and had the impression that for him, solitary life in Alaska was the way he saw humans in general- brave and as spiritually on their own as he was geographically. I really love your pictures and poems together with Whitman who feels so much a part of things, often. The commonalities and tensions between the two poets makes me think. I love it!


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## moverking (Feb 26, 2007)

The words give even deeper meaning to the day to day walks....the familiar landscape that will be here long after us all. Little bits of us all, cells and souls, scattered along the trails.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

Ljilly28 said:


> Jax's muddy face is the best, and Gus is in Jax and Finn is too and Gus is in Finn and Rip and Rodin and Comet too and Borax.


All looking back over their shoulders at us, old friends impatient on the trail upwards.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

moverking said:


> The words give even deeper meaning to the day to day walks....the familiar landscape that will be here long after us all. Little bits of us all, cells and souls, scattered along the trails.


Whitman and Frost saw all of this without needing a dog as a guide, but I wouldn't trade my dogs for their genius.


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## moverking (Feb 26, 2007)

Ljilly28 said:


> Brian, those are some of my favorite Whitman lines to teach. I always walk into class and instead of taking my usual seat, I ask the AP juniors: Where's Walt Whitman right now? If you need to have a heart-to-heart talk with him this very second, where is he? Then, someone will start citing a page numberfrom the previous night's reading to say he's in the grass. But I cut them off and say hell, no - TAKE us there and throw open the classroom door. . . Since I never let them go outside, it's always awesome. We lay in the leaves of grass and have class Whitman's way- under the sky not the ceilings of classrooms or churches, lol. And we talk about how yes he's in the grass but he's also in the poem- how individual letters make up a meaningful sentences like one blade of grass makes up a field and how books have leaves. . .
> 
> Jax's muddy face is the best, and Gus is in Jax and Finn is too and Gus is in Finn and Rip and Rodin and Comet too and Borax.


Where were you when I took Lit, lol. What an awesome teacher...

And I have to admit, I started to post to tippy about that delightful pic of Gus...then had to go back to look for the pi sign


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

moverking said:


> And I have to admit, I started to post to tippy about that delightful pic of Gus...then had to go back to look for the pi sign


I see the resemblance myself, and my parents commented on it several times while they were up with us this weekend, but when I look at photos of the two side by side, what stands out to me are the differences.

Still, even I'll admit that the family resemblance is strong.

(The first pic is Gus in '05, the second is Jax yesterday).


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## Old Gold Mum2001 (Feb 25, 2007)

Absolutely beautiful  
What a great post!!!


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## Pudden (Dec 28, 2008)

tippykayak said:


> I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
> If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.


I want this one inscribed on my tombstone; I love it. Can you tell me what it's from (Ol' Walt, I guess?)


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

It's from Walt Whitman's "Song Of Myself"- the end. You might recall part of it from Dead Poet Society. He uses the pronoun "I" universally he says because he feels that "America is the greatest poem" of all; all Americans are equal and similar in fineness to one another, so that any one of our individual "I's" should give a glimpse into what we share in common- a true democracy. I love how he says "I too" because the other person he means is YOU, the reader one or two or five hundred years later. He has confidence in us, the future generation of Americans, to both shout from the rooftops and look for him in the grass (and the words). 



I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.


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## Pudden (Dec 28, 2008)

yeah - remember now; I read that a long time ago. Since then, been reading too many science papers; but then, I always thought the languages of science and poetry have much in common: if done well, both are sparing and precise, and use few words to say a lot.

since I learned English, I always thought that's a beautiful language for both poetry and science, because it's such a simple, precise language (compared to German anyways...)


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## moverking (Feb 26, 2007)

tippykayak said:


> I see the resemblance myself, and my parents commented on it several times while they were up with us this weekend, but when I look at photos of the two side by side, what stands out to me are the differences.
> 
> Still, even I'll admit that the family resemblance is strong.
> 
> (The first pic is Gus in '05, the second is Jax yesterday).


Gus looks/feels like a coiled spring.....potential energy at its red gold best


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

Pudden said:


> yeah - remember now; I read that a long time ago. Since then, been reading too many science papers; but then, I always thought the languages of science and poetry have much in common: if done well, both are sparing and precise, and use few words to say a lot.
> 
> since I learned English, I always thought that's a beautiful language for both poetry and science, because it's such a simple, precise language (compared to German anyways...)


My favorite two poets are german and I wish I could read them without a translation 

Rainer Maria Rilke, especially:

Who shows a child who he really is?
Who has twisted us like this,
so that no matter how we try,
we always take the shape of someone leaving?

Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision;
there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.

Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe;
perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.
Yes--the springtimes needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past, 
or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing.
All this was mission. But could you accomplish it?

Weren't you always distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved?
(Where can you find a place to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

The Gus/Jax photo makes me teary.


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## Kand3 (Nov 3, 2008)

This is just a beautiful thread and has been such a joy to read through. Thank you!


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## Abbydabbydo (Jan 31, 2007)

*OK, I am sorry for being so basic*

But I had to memorize this in grade school and it still means the world to me. Meaning I love it.



*Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening*

By Robert Frost 


_Whose woods these are I think I know. 
His house is in the village though; 
He will not see me stopping here 
To watch his woods fill up with snow. 


My little horse must think it queer 
To stop without a farmhouse near 
Between the woods and frozen lake 
The darkest evening of the year. 


He gives his harness bells a shake 
To ask if there is some mistake. 
The only other sound’s the sweep 
Of easy wind and downy flake. 


The woods are lovely, dark and deep. 
But I have promises to keep, 
And miles to go before I sleep, 
And miles to go before I sleep.


Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923, �© 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., renewed 1951, by Robert Frost. Reprinted with the permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. 



Robert Frost (1874-1963)
_


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## Pudden (Dec 28, 2008)

here is my favorite Rilke poem. It goes well with that "I'll be back in some organic form, whatever it may be" idea that Ol' Walt also had.:

Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen,
die sich über die Dinge ziehn.
Ich werde den letzten vielleicht nicht vollbringen,
aber versuchen will ich ihn. 

Ich kreise um Gott, um den uralten Turm,
und ich kreise jahrtausendelang;
und ich weiß noch nicht: bin ich ein Falke, ein Sturm
oder ein großer Gesang. 

I found an english translation:

*I live my life in growing orbits*
_By Rainer Maria Rilke_

I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.

I must say, it does lose a lot in translation. The rhythm, the rhyme...


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

I love the Frost poem too. Thanks for bringing it. Being drawn into the woods by the goldens every day, I feel that lure to just stay in the forest, in a literal way. I like the way the cheery bells of the harness jingle a bit when the horse stamps, preventing the poem's speaker from being entirely lost inside his own inner woods. It is a deathwish of the most gentle kind and then a self-rescue. . . they'll be no napping in the snow like Dorothy in the poppy fields. Promises, meaningful ones, must be kept.


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

If I run away to Alaska, will you teach me German so I can read rilke?


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## Pudden (Dec 28, 2008)

Ljilly28 said:


> If I run away to Alaska, will you teach me German so I can read rilke?


ooh sure, and to slap mosquitos.

btw, who's the other one? (German poet, I mean)


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## Abbydabbydo (Jan 31, 2007)

Ljilly28 said:


> I love the Frost poem too. Thanks for bringing it. Being drawn into the woods by the goldens every day, I feel that lure to just stay in the forest, in a literal way. I like the way the cheery bells of the harness jingle a bit when the horse stsmps, preventing the poem's speaker from being entirely lost inside his own inner woods. It is a deathwish of the most gentle kind. . . they'll be no napping in the snow likr Dorothy in the poppy fields. Promises, meaningful ones, musty be kept.


I love the part about promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. When I am on the trail with the pups and can't think of a song to hum, I play that in my head. Then I usually think of an Allman Brother's song. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2dpgXYvMHI

I thought we might like some different poets.


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## Pudden (Dec 28, 2008)

ya know, thinking abouit that Rilke poem some more:

in the original German, it has a sort-of gyrating, pulsing rhythm, like circling, circling around a center. The rhyme also helps, because it's circular, going back to the origin. Then, toward the end, the rhythm gets slower and more open, as if the circles get wider (wachsende Ringe: growing circles). All that is lost in the translation, alas... 

seems to me that it would be more important to preserve these qualities of the poem in a translation than its literal meaning.


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

Pudden said:


> seems to me that it would be more important to preserve these qualities of the poem in a translation than its literal meaning.


I agree with you! Poems have three artforms wrapped in one:Music, the Image/ visual art, and writing. The "music" is too important to tamper with- the meter and rhyme etc must be so hard to translate. . . I am in awe of your ability to read in german!


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

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This James Wright poem is about the way a burst of love for animals can take an ordinary moment and turn it into a benediction and a blessing. The ponies call him out of his everyday, banal self and transform the moment to pure magic. Our dogs do this for us too.


A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom. 

James Wright


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

Ljilly28 said:


> This James Wright poem is about the way a burst of love for animals can take an ordinary moment and turn it into a benediction and a blessing.


I wonder, is it because they pay attention to the moment, the now, with a prayerful focus? Just looking at that picture, I see Tally so engrossed in what's happening _now_, rather than in what might be or what was. That's a kind of beautiful prayer, a peaceful gratitude for a friend by your side and some friends to watch.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Afternoon on a Hill”










When does a new friend become an old one? 

When does the heart move from the fresh surprises of love newly found to the warm comfort of days spent together?

When do you start feeling more the gratitude of a friend’s consistency and faithfulness than the gratitude of finding him in the first place?

I couldn’t tell you the day, but I can show you the dog.


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## moverking (Feb 26, 2007)

Brian, _that_ gives me happy tears...it's beautiful. And I have someone I'd love to share that with. 

Thanks for the sunshine spot this morning


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

moverking said:


> Brian, _that_ gives me happy tears...it's beautiful. And I have someone I'd love to share that with.
> 
> Thanks for the sunshine spot this morning


Oh, wow. Glad I could be of service. The dogs bring so many bright spots into my day that I try to make a point to share them a bit here and there.


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## 3459 (Dec 27, 2007)

Ahhhh, this beautiful thread is still going! So glad . . .


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

Air, soil, water, fire—those are words,
I myself am a word with them—my qualities interpenetrate with theirs—my name is nothing to them,
Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?

Air











Air










Water











Soil











And always, always fire in the coats and in the eyes.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

I inadvertently broke the photo link in a previous post in this thread, so I'm fixing the photo and reposting it.



tippykayak said:


> Hey, as long as I'm in this thread, I should mention that since I read your post, Whitman lines keep on flying out of my memory and getting stuck on my woods time with the dogs. Yesterday it was "uttering joyous leaves" while the dogs were romping in a field with Andy.
> 
> I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
> All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches;
> ...


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best...

from "A Clear Midnight" by Walt Whitman, of course.


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## rik6230 (Jan 8, 2008)

How beautiful. It took me some time to understand the poem (my english is not that good:doh but it makes the last photo really special and inspiring. Thank you for sharing.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

rik said:


> How beautiful. It took me some time to understand the poem (my english is not that good:doh but it makes the last photo really special and inspiring. Thank you for sharing.


I'm really glad you like it and impressed that you're that good in a second language.

I just love the phrase "the day erased."


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## Eleanor's Mom (Nov 6, 2009)

This thread started an interesting discussion in the faculty room at work today. One of the English classes was starting a poetry unit and I shared this with the English teacher which brought on a long discussion about different ways to ways of looking at the same piece of writing. My degrees are in the sciences and a lot of the poetry spoke to me about the outdoors and nature, but someone else may have a different take interpretation of the same line. And then again we can look at these poems through the lenses of our dogs. 

I just received an email from the Head of our English Department sharing this poem, which came up in the discussion.

*Golden Retrievals
*









Mark Doty (1953—) was born in Tennessee but grew up in the American Southwest— 

By Mark Doty

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention 
seconds at a time. Catch? I don’t think so. 
Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’s—oh 
joy—actually scared. Sniff the wind, then 

I’m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue 
of any thrillingly dead thing. And you? 
Either you’re sunk in the past, half our walk, 
thinking of what you never can bring back, 

or else you’re off in some fog concerning 
—tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work: 
to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving, 
my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark, 

a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here, 
entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.


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## Finn's Fan (Dec 22, 2007)

Mark Doty's book Dog Years is a wonderful read about his dogs Arden and Beau.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

Mark Doty is one of my favorite poets, and that book Finn's Fan just mentioned is simply awesome.


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## justmejanis (Feb 25, 2007)

The poetry, the amazing photos, have touched me deeply this long sad day.

Thank you all who contributed. I will feel joy again.


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

Again, I am so sorry about your terrible news. I have felt that hurt, and dread when it comes again. I do love Walt Whitman's sense of expansiveness- he says he cannot leave us because of how much he loved the grass itself and is part of it and part of us too. I feel that way about the goldens I lost to hemangiosarcoma : Raleigh is part of Finn and part of the lake in which he loved to swim, and Raleigh is part of me. When I caught a glimpse of Tally the other day looking at seagulls on the beach, I accidently called him Joplin- a dear dog who has been gone for years. Joplin is in Tally and right now, Finn and Tally are mentoring a new baby even as Finny's dear face whitens with the years. It's sad but beautiful too. I think the golden generations are so much like ours only they are accelerated so we have to face it.Grandmother gives way, but great granddaughter is born and they are part of one another.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

You actually called Tally Raleigh on the walk the other day, right after he came bursting out of the woods at top speed. It was just in passing; I don't even know if you actually said Raleigh instead of Tally or if that's just what I heard. I didn't say anything, just remembered Raleigh and felt how much he was still walking with us.


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

One must have a mind of winter 
To regard the frost and the boughs 
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time 
To behold the junipers shagged with ice, 
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think 
Of any misery in the sound of the wind, 
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land 
Full of the same wind 
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow, 
And, nothing himself, beholds 
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens The Snowman


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## Oaklys Dad (Dec 28, 2005)

Love that shot for today. Beautiful.


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## marleysmummy (Jul 11, 2008)

What a gorgeous picture!


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

Thanks- there are some days when all of our hearts just break with love for these golden dogs- all so much alike on a fundemental level. I think it's what keeps GRF uninted.


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

-Walt Whitman
“I Sing the Body Electric”


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

Love this picture of Comet and Ajax, especially the gleeful "Got Milk?" snow mustaches.


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

My college class had an amazing discussion of this poem today:

Next Time
by Mark Strand

I

Nobody sees it happening, but the architecture of our time
Is becoming the architecture of the next time. And the dazzle

Of light upon the waters is as nothing beside the changes
Wrought therein, just as our waywardness means

Nothing against the steady pull of things over the edge.
Nobody can stop the flow, but nobody can start it either.

Time slips by; our sorrows do not turn into poems,
And what is invisible stays that way. Desire has fled,

Leaving only a trace of perfume in its wake,
And so many people we loved have gone,

And no voice comes from outer space, from the folds
Of dust and carpets of wind to tell us that this

Is the way it was meant to happen, that if only we knew
How long the ruins would last we would never complain.

II

Perfection is out of the question for people like us,
So why plug away at the same old self when the landscape

Has opened its arms and given us marvelous shrines
To flock towards? The great motels to the west are waiting,

In somebody’s yard a pristine dog is hoping that we’ll drive by,
And on the rubber surface of a lake people bobbing up and down

Will wave. The highway comes right to the door, so let’s
Take off before the world out there burns up. Life should be more

Than the body’s weight working itself from room to room.
A turn through the forest will do us good, so will a spin

Among the farms. Just think of the chickens strutting,
The cows swinging their udders, and flicking their tails at flies.

And one can imagine prisms of summer light breaking against
The silent, haze-filled sleep of the farmer and his wife.

III

It could have been another story, the one that was meant
Instead of the one that happened. Living like this,

Hoping to revise what has been false or rendered unreadable
Is not what we wanted. Believing that the intended story

Would have been like a day in the west when everything
Is tirelessly present—the mountains casting their long shadow

Over the valley where the wind sings its circular tune
And trees respond with a dry clapping of leaves—was overly

Simple no doubt, and short-sighted. For soon the leaves,
Having gone black, would fall, and the annulling snow

Would pillow the walk, and we, with shovels in hand, would meet,
Bow, and scrape the sidewalk clean. What else would there be

This late in the day for us but desire to make amends
And start again, the sun’s compassion as it disappears.

Mark Strand teaches in the Writing Seminars at John Hopkins. (1997)


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

...The highway comes right to the door, so let’s
Take off before the world out there burns up. Life should be more

Than the body’s weight working itself from room to room.
A turn through the forest will do us good...


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

Fleet of foot, neither can you catch me


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

My work:
to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving,
my haze-headed friend, you.

Mark Doty, "Golden Retrievals"


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## tippykayak (Oct 27, 2008)

Splendor of ended day floating and filling me,
Hour prophetic, hour resuming the past,
Inflating my throat, you divine average,
You earth and life till the last ray gleams I sing.
Open mouth of my soul uttering gladness,
Eyes of my soul seeing perfection,
Natural life of me faithfully praising things,
Corroborating forever the triumph of things.

Uncle Walt, "Song of Sunset"


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## rik6230 (Jan 8, 2008)

Beautiful


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## Pudden (Dec 28, 2008)

this is one of Mama's favorite threads, so here is an attempt to revive it:

Mama has been reading poems, and Old Walt, because it makes her feel close to her Pudden. Here is one she found by Robert Wrigley: it reminds Mama of the softer side of her Pudden, who was a wild child and a noodle, but also so full of honesty, loyalty and faith:*

Robert Wrigley
Religion* 

The last thing the old dog brought home
from her pilgrimages through the woods
was a man's dress shoe, a black, still-shiny wing-tip.

I feared at first a foot might be in it.
But no, it was just an ordinary shoe.
And while it was clear it had been worn,

and because the mouth of the dog —
a retriever, skilled at returning ducks and geese —
was soft, the shoe remained a good shoe

and I might have given it
to a one-legged friend
but all of them dressed their prostheses too,

so there it was. A rescued
or a stolen odd shoe. Though in the last months
of the dog's life, I noticed

how the shoe became her friend, almost,
something she slept on or near
and nosed whenever she passed,

as though checking it to see if,
in her absence, that mysterious, familiar,
missing foot, might not have come again.


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## Ljilly28 (Jan 22, 2008)

It's so cool you revived this thread. 

When the Lush babies died this summer, no end of consolation came to me from this poem by Louise Gluck:









Vespers

In your extended absence, you permit me 
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report 
failure in my assignment, principally 
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow 
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold 
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come 
so often here, while other regions get 
twelve weeks of summer. All this 
belongs to you: on the other hand, 
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots 
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart 
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly 
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of 
that term. You who do not discriminate 
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence, 
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know 
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible 
for these vines.


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