Stopping by a Ditch on a Hot Summer Day {a pastiche}...

Showy Milkwort

Whose ditch this is I do not know,

This wet grass where wildflowers grow.

I hope no one can see me here

Stopping to capture beauty low.

Black-eyed Susan

Thrilled I noticed before it's mowed

This ditch along a country road

Between the highway and the bridge,

Half past noon by the orange grove.

Showy Milkwort

Swallow-tailed kite glides high above,

Powerline perch a pair of dove,

Bees buzz by black-eyed susan's heads,

This ditch of flowers that I love.

Star Rush

To linger long would be so sweet

But ice cream's melting on the seat,

And lunch to make before we eat,

And lunch to make before we eat.

*After a morning of appointments and shopping for groceries {yes, there really was ice cream in the car} -a pastiche by moi, with much gratitude to Mr. Frost.

Still Saturday::to gather the harvest of the quiet eye...

To have an eye for the wide pictures and slight studies of nature; to gather them up in solitary walks which thus are not lonely; to lay them by, together with the heart's deeper thoughts, its associations, meditations and reminiscences; this is to fashion common things into a beauty which, to the fashioner at least, may be a joy for ever.

The Harvest of the Quiet Eye - Leisure Thoughts for Busy Lives, by John Richard Vernon

:: 

The outward shows of sky and earth
of hill and valley he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude

In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart,
- the harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.
from A Poet's Epitaph by William Wordsworth

Thank you, Sandy, for giving me the opportunity to host Still Saturday last month, but we've all missed you and we're thrilled that you are back.

Still Saturday::the wondrous plan...

Silent
by Edgar Guest

I did not argue with the man,
It seemed a waste of words.
He gave to chance the wondrous plan
That gave sweet song to birds.

He gave to force the wisdom wise
That shaped the honeybee,
And made the useful butterflies
So beautiful to see.

And as we walked 'neath splendid trees
Which cast a friendly shade,
He said: "Such miracles as these
By accident were made."

Too well I know what accident
And chance and force disclose
To think blind fury could invent
The beauty of a rose.

I let him talk and answered not.
I merely thought it odd
That he could view a garden plot
And not believe in God.



{Photo - a male painted bunting, March 2013. One of my photos that will be on display in the Hendry County Courthouse}