Thursday, November 05, 2015

Something almost summer

I have wanted to use this image on the blog for a long time because I like the simplicity of it.
I made it so long ago that I don't remember whether that is gold paint or digital shimmer.
So here it is tonight, with another poem from Robert Francis.

I am midway into his memoirs, The Trouble With Francis 
and enjoying it very much. He has taken the title from a sentence 
from an article on his poetry in the Chicago Review, Summer, 1967,

"The trouble with Francis is not
that he's too happy as that his
happiness seems to lack weight."

which he uses as an epigraph for his book.

It totally gives me the giggles and makes me never want to publish anything,


Bluejays

Always I hear the bluejays
These early autumn blue days,
Taunting the leaves to hurry,
Wanting the snow to flurry,
Wanting a blue-white weather
To match their blue-white feather.
All right, all right, I'm willing
and far, far more than willing.
But leave me a few days longer
to satisfy my hunger
For something almost summer
After the end of summer,
When the quiet mind goes gleaning
For odds and ends of meaning
Before the year's transition,
Before the mind's submission.
Then let the jays come screaming
And jar me from my dreaming.

Robert Francis
Collected Poems, 1936-1938,
University of Massachusetts Press, 1976, page 150.

And now, for the more literal-minded, here are Eastern Blue Jays
at my feeder in Northern Michigan in September, 2014.

                                                     jhh

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