Flotilla of mallards under the willow

Burley finished up today. Finding him to do this cleanup has been a real blessing. He has taken four trailer loads to the dump for compostables. Leaves, branches, dead limbs, cattails, cottonwood sucker-shoots, weeds of all descriptions. This willow had more dead branches than living ones. The ducks love it under the willow; look for them on the far side of the stream. And the willow is already beginning to put out new shoots  toward us from the parts trimmed a couple of weeks ago. I've just spent the better part of blog-hour resolving lost Internet connectivity. No matter how many times it happens, it is always shocking to see "this device is not connected to the Internet" on the screen.

Here is a Transtromer poem I have been saving since last year, when I left this book behind. Perhaps it will remind me that I haven't packed up that package to mail to my brother yet.

Airmail

On the hunt for a letterbox
I took the letter through the city.
In the great forest of stone and concrete
fluttered the straying butterfly.

The postage-stamps flying carpet
the swaying lines of the address
added to my sealed-in truth
right now floating above the ocean.

The Atlantic's creeping silver.
The cloud-banks, the fishing boat
like a spat-out olive stone.
And the keel-wakes' pallid scars.

Here below the work goes slowly.
I often glance toward the clock.
The tree-shadows are black numerals
in the avaricious silence.

The truth is to be found on the ground
but no-one ventures to carry it off.
The truth is lying on the street.
No one makes it his own.

Tomas Transtromer, from Inspired Notes;
Poems of Tomas Transtromer, translated by John F. Deane.
Dedalus Press, 2011, page 64.