To my almost certain knowledge, I learned this song as a small child as we did go over the river and through the wood to grandfather's house for Thanksgiving. Grandfather's house would have been the Home Place, as my grandparents called it. And the sleigh was an automobile of an early 1940's vintage. And it was Iowa, so there was snow. There was probably pumpkin pie. I don't remember much else, but this song has always meant Thanksgiving to me and not just because of the title. There was a river, and there was a wood, and there was certainly pumpkin pie. Read more about Over the River

For some reason, the images of "weak hold," "slip out," and "dying miser" spoke to me this week. All due apologies to my maple tree.

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Maple Leaves

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich Read more about I See Politics

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
William Wordsworth Read more about London by Wordsworth

Beyond a ridge of pine with russet tips
The west lifts to the sun her longing lips,

Her blushes stain with gold and garnet dye
The shore, the river and the wide far sky;

Like floods of wine the waters filter through
The reeds that brush our indolent canoe.

I beach the bow where sands in shadows lie;
You hold my hand a space, then speak good-bye.

Upwinds your pathway through the yellow plumes
Of goldenrod, profuse in August blooms, Read more about Thistle Down

Some flowers are withered and some joys have died;
The garden reeks with an East Indian scent
From beds where gillyflowers stand weak and spent;
The white heat pales the skies from side to side;
But in still lakes and rivers, cool, content,
Like starry blooms on a new firmament,
White lilies float and regally abide.
In vain the cruel skies their hot rays shed;
The lily does not feel their brazen glare.
In vain the pallid clouds refuse to share
Read more about A Calendar of Sonnets: July

Light as Leaf on Lindentree
by J.R.R. Tolkien

...

The grass was very long and thin,
The leaves of many years lay thick,
The old tree-roots wound out and in,
And the early moon was glimmering.
There went her white feet lilting quick,
And Dairon’s flute did bubble thin,
As neath the hemlock umbels thick
Tinúviel danced a-shimmering. Read more about A Glimpse of Light in the Darkness

THE WASTE LAND (by T.S. Eliot)

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

April is the cruellest month,breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain. Read more about The Waste Land

R.Frost 100th B'day
March 26, 1974 Read more about Magic Astir

February

Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It's his
way of telling whether or not I'm dead. Read more about February

January

For January I give you vests of skins,
And mighty fires in hall, and torches lit;
Chambers and happy beds with all things fit;
Smooth silken sheets, rough furry counterpanes;
And sweetmeats baked; and one that deftly spins
Warm arras; and Douay cloth, and store of it;
And on this merry manner still to twit
The wind, when most his mastery the wind wins.
Or issuing forth at seasons in the day,
Ye'll fling soft handfuls of the fair white snow