OH, Canada! May, 2012

Hi, kids!

 

We made a flying trip to  Saskatchewan, Canada Saturday.  If you get to Weyburn, the Welsh Kitchen on 3rd has homemade breads, soups and baked good and they serve you with a smile!  And, the health food store is adjacent making shopping a veritable snap.

 

On to the report!

 

Lines lean.

(Western North Dakota has  also been a little wet.)

 

 

TALL barn.

 

 

I counted 17 wells in this ONE field.  POOR farmer.....(ya right.)  The oil boom is alive and well in Saskatchewan!

 

 

"Hood" ornament.

 

Love the rusted roof...

 

 

 

 

Weyburn wheat.  (Gigantic metal sculpture in downtown Weyburn).

 

 

The country was FULL of potholes.  Each pothole was FULL of ducks.

 

 

Love the dormer, mirroring the shape of the barn.

 

 

 

 

Little black duck.

 

 

Pothole pair peer.

 

 

Pothole pair paddle.

 

 

 

 

Water woes = bird bliss, as evidenced by the napping goose on top of the bales!

 

 

Country church.

 

 

Stone house.  Love the sassy brickwork above the windows and door.

 

 

The stone work appears as solid as the day it was built.  I could live here - to look at the stone masonry daily would be a treat!

 

 

This fancy relic sports FOUR lightning rods.  To me, this says that the place was a recurrent target for the monstrous thunderstorms sweeping the prairies of the north.

 

 

 

Duck pond, South of the border.

 

 

 

Meeting of the minds.

 

 

For those of you former Wolf Pointers....this is a new fertilizer plant located in the Macon Junction.    To get a grasp on the enormity of it, look at the size of the vehicles parked at either end....

 

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I am told that others gather inspiration from my photos.  I know of three artists who paint from them.  One woman uses my critters as characters in her children's stories and now I have learned of a poet garnering inspiration as well.  I'd like to share some of his work with you.  He told me that my pothole reflections were his "muse" for these poems.  Enjoy the poetry of Stuart Bruane!

 

Pothole reflection (#3)

You are nothing

Space

A void

Mist and oil

But when we meet

I fill you completely

We are one

Damage done

In that brief moment

I can think of nothing but you.

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Pothole reflection (#4)

I am broken

Even Mother’s crystalline fairies

Tear at my very skin

I am undone

The mad rushings of men*

Bear down upon me

Do not curse me

See…

You and I are the same

Traveler and traveled

Where do we begin and end

* Note: The pothole reflection series of poems harken to a literary period where gender-inclusive language was not the norm.

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Pothole reflection (#4, numerator b)

We are the same you and I

Do we not both carry the burden

Of passing fortunes

And mindless progress?

Does not our evolving

Expand

And yet

Empty us?

Is not your heart broken too?

Yet on a clear day

After a rain

Our wounds reflect the passing clouds

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"Our ideas, like orange plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box that imprisons the roots."  - Edward Bulwer Lytton

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