Aunt Kim's Tacos with Sour Cream

 This is Logan, who paints, and who took an independent walk. Here he is enjoying sour cream during the same visit earlier this summer. I was looking through the photos for a handsome nature shot and was captured by this one. Which is kind of a handsome nature photo, if you think about it. At least, as his grandmother, I think so!

There is a bakery here that makes a round loaf with whole grains, pecans and whole sour pie cherries in it. All summer long, it sold out early in the day, and when we stopped by that day's baking was all gone. But now most of the Summer People have gone home. And this afternoon, there was plenty of cherry bread; I bought two loaves. I don't think that is why I am so tired tonight--I only ate two slices!

I got a book of poems today by an Oregon poet, Mark Thalman, whose work I was not familiar with, even though these poems have appeared in many literary magazines.

I was attracted to this one by the first line, and it's good all the way through. It is an example of a kind of poem I like, with many images taken from the natural world.

SERENITY BAY, ODELL LAKE

A deer wades in the shallows at dusk.
The lake is smooth and calm as a meditation.

Trout sporadically rise
taking flies, forming rings . . .

While evening dims, shadows
the size of a hand, flit across the surface.

Seizing insects, they dive in looping figure eights
or sliightly graze the water.

forming ripples, which blend
back into the transparent body

already turning a black sheen,
capturing stars, galaxies---

light from across the universe
before the Cascades existed.

from Catching the Limit, by Mark Thalman, Northwest Poetry Series, Fairweather Press, 2009, page 55.