Tag: photo

Poe Poem

It’s no surprise that in the land of ten thousand lakes, portaging (carrying your canoe from one lake to the next) is a viable means of transportation. In fact, in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, it’s the ONLY way around, as motorized access is not allowed in the pristine wilderness.

You’ll notice that in the photo above, there are no boats, houses, or people anywhere. It is this solitude that Edgar Allan Poe, yes, the Master of Macabre, wrote about in his poem “The Lake”, of which I’ve included an excerpt:

“In spring of youth it was my lot

To haunt of the wide earth a spot

The which I could not love the less

So lovely was the loneliness

Of a wild lake, with rocky bound

And tall pine trees that tower’d around.”

–Photo by me

The Battle for Love

So many young folks get married without actually understanding what true love is, and consequently end up in a stormy marriage, always battling for a love that seems to be forever beyond their reach. This tanka is for them:

the battle you fight

for love can only be won

by surrendering

for love cannot be taken;

it must be given to us

–photo by me

Happy Yellow

They say a lot of things. For example, they say in North Dakota that you can watch your dog run away for two days. Here in Minnesota, they say there’s no summer–only three months of poor sledding.

They also say that the color yellow represents happiness. There are the obvious reasons, of course, like sunshine and such, but I’d like to suggest a deeper connection. You see, we have no receptors in our eyes for yellow; what we’re actually seeing is a certain ratio of red to green. Our brains do the rest.

Your color yellow and mine might not even be the same.

And so the connection between yellow and happiness is this: they can only come from within.

–Photo by me