online: 16 november 2012 modified: 15 january, 3 may 2012 15 january 2012 seagulls standing
on a frozen pond
... about twenty seagulls (all of the same kind) standing on the first ice of the season... in this cold wind from the east... after weeks of warm wind from the west...
...i nearly stayed indoors today but am glad that i came out...
...now at the 39 steps... where i stop to re-read a new year resolution:
looking back without regrets
or false hopes of the unknown
may our presence in the new
be a sign and a de-sign
that the future can be changed
and human life can be constructive
...while contemplating some exceedingly bare branches and fallen ferns now become bracken...
...the pale sky looks so pure today... as if timeless or identical to all times since the beginning... though it seems to me now that there never was and never will be either beginning or end to all that is...
...and to my right are the red berries of holly... perhaps growing even now despite the cold...
...after pausing to decide direction he goes directly to the bus stop so as to continue this indoors... in heated air... he is reminded of the beauty of a house across the road... a house with large windows and a door to one side... and resembling a child's drawing of a house... perhaps built a century ago... in that belle epoch before the 'the lights went out all over Europe'* as the modern age became negative... and the liberal dream was destroyed... (by World War 1)...
*reference in Wikipedia to this statement attributed to Lord Grey... foreign secretary of the UK in 1914... who did not remember saying these words but others remembered... and his remark became part of history...
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